The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture I tried to point out how by means of the kind of knowledge cultivated by Anthroposophy, man may be seen in his whole nature—consisting of body, soul and Spirit. I tried to show also how an inner knowledge of the conditions of health and disease can only be arrived at when the entire nature of man can be perceived in this way; and how in learning to know the true connections between the things which take place within man and the external processes and conditions of substances in Nature, we also succeed in establishing a connecting link between pathology and therapy.

Our next task will be to explain in detail what was only given in general outline in the first lecture. And for this it will above all be necessary to observe how disintegration is proceeding in the human organism and how, on the other hand, there is a constant process of integration. Man has, to begin with, an external physical organisation which is perceptible by means of the outer senses, and whose manifestations can be comprehended by the reason. Besides this physical body there is also the first super-sensible body of the human being: the etheric, or life-body. These two principles of the constitution of man serve to build up (integrate) the human organisation.

The physical body is continually renewed as it casts off its substance. The etheric body—which contains the forces of growth and of assimilation—is, in the entirety of its constitution, something of which we can gain a conception when we behold the growing and blossoming plant-kingdom in the spring; for the plants, as well as human beings, have an etheric or life-body. In these two members of the human organisation we have a progressive, constructive evolution.

In so far as man is a sentient being, he bears within himself the next member, the astral body. (We need not feel that such terms are objectionable; we should perceive what they reveal to us.) The astral body is essentially the mediator of sensation, the bearer of the inner life of feeling. The astral body contains not only the upbuilding forces but also the forces of destruction. Just as the etheric body makes the being of man bud and sprout, as it were, so all these processes of budding are continually being disintegrated again by the astral body; and just because of this, just because the physical and etheric bodies are continually being disintegrated, there exists in the human organisation an activity of soul and Spirit.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that the soul and Spirit in man's nature inhere in the upbuilding process and that this process at last reaches a certain point—let us say in the nervous system—where it can become the bearer of soul and Spirit. That is not the case. When eventually (and everything points to this being soon), our very admirable modern scientific research has made further progress, it will become apparent that an anabolic, a constructive process in the nervous system is not the essential thing; it is present in the nervous organisation merely in order that the nerves may, in fact, exist. But the nerve-process is in a continual, though slow state of dissolution; and because it is so, because the physical is always being dissolved, a place is set free for the Spirit and soul.

In a still higher degree is this the case as regards the actual Ego-organisation, by means of which man is raised above all the other beings of Nature surrounding him on the Earth. The Ego-organisation is essentially bound up with katabolism; it is of greatest moment in those parts of the human being that are in a state of disintegration.

So when we look into this wonderful form of the human organism, we see that in every single organ there is construction, integration (whereby the organ ministers to growth and progressive development), and also destruction, whereby it ministers to retrogressive physical development, and by so doing gives foothold for the soul and Spirit. I said in the last lecture that the state of balance between integration and disintegration which is present in a particular way in every human organ, can be disturbed. The upbuilding process can become rampant; in that case we have to do with an unhealthy condition. When we look in this way into the nature of the human being (to begin with I can only state these things rather abstractly; they will be expressed more concretely presently), when we proceed conscientiously, with a sense of scientific responsibility and do not talk in generalisations about the presence of integration and disintegration, but really study each individual organ as conscientiously as we have learnt to do in scientific observations to-day—then we shall be able to penetrate into this condition of balance that is necessary for the single organs and so find it possible to obtain a conception of the human being in health. If in either direction, either with respect to constructive or with respect to destructive processes, the balance of an organ is upset, then we have to do with something that is unhealthy in the human organism.

Now, however, we must discover how this human organism stands in relation to the three kingdoms of Nature in the outer world—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—from which we have of course to extract our remedies. When we have studied this inner state of balance in the manner described, we shall see how everything that is present in the three kingdoms of Nature outside man is, in every direction, being overcome within the human organism.

Let us take the simplest example:—the condition of warmth in man. Nothing of the outer conditions of warmth must be carried on unchanged when it is once within the human organism. When we investigate the manifestations of warmth outside in Nature, we know that warmth raises the temperature of things in the outer world. We say that warmth penetrates into things. If we, in our organisation, were to be penetrated in the same way by warmth we should be made ill by it. It is only when, through the forces and quality of our organisation we are able to receive this warmth-process which is being exercised upon us, into our organism and immediately transform it into an inner process, that our organisation is in a state of health. We are harmed by either heat or cold directly we are not in a position to receive it into our organisation and transform it.

In respect of warmth or cold everyone can see this quite easily for himself. Moreover the same holds good for all other Nature processes. Only careful study, sharpened by spiritual perception, can lead to the recognition that every process taking place in Nature is transformed, metamorphosed, when it occurs within the human organism. We are indeed incessantly overcoming what lives in our earthly environment.

If we now consider the whole internal organisation of man we must say that if the inner force of the human being which inwardly transforms the external events and processes that are always working in upon him—for example, when he is taking nourishment—if this force were removed, then all that enters man from outside would work as a foreign process, and in a sense—if I were to express it crudely or trivially—man would be filled with foreign bodies or foreign processes. On the other hand, if the higher members of man's being, the astral body and the Ego-organisation develop excessive strength, then he does not only so transform the outer processes of his environment that enter into him as they should be transformed, but he does so more rampantly. Then there is a speeding-up of the processes which penetrate him. External Nature is driven out beyond the human—becomes in a certain sense, over-spiritualised; and we are faced with a disturbance of the health.

What we have thus indicated as an abstract principle is realty present in every human organ and must be studied individually in the case of them all. Moreover the human being is related in a highly complicated manner, to all the different ways in which he transforms the external processes.

He who strives to get beyond the undisputed testimony of up-to-date anatomy and physiology, who tries to develop his understanding so that he can transform the conception of the human organism yielded by a study of the corpse or pathological conditions, observing them not merely in regard to their “dead” structures but according to their living nature, will find himself faced with endless enigmas of the human organism. For the more exact and the more living our knowledge becomes, the more complicated does it appear. There are, however, certain guiding lines which enable us to find our way through the labyrinth. And if I may be allowed to make a personal observation here, it is that the discovery of such guiding lines was a matter with which I occupied myself for thirty years before I began to speak about it openly—which was about the year 1917. As a comparatively young man, in the early twenties, I asked myself whether there was any possibility of research into this complicated human organisation. Were there certain fundamental principles which would enable one to arrive at a comprehensive understanding? And this led me—(I have just said that the study took me thirty years)—to the fact that one can regard the human organisation from three different aspects: the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system.

What we can call the organisation of nerves and senses predominates over all the others. It is, moreover, the bearer of all that can be described as the life of concepts. On the other hand, what we describe as the rhythmic organisation is, in a certain respect, self-contained. There is the rhythm of the breath, the rhythm of the circulation, the rhythm manifested in sleeping and waking, and countless other rhythmic processes. It was by making a practical and accurate distinction between the rhythmic organisation and the nerves-and-senses organisation that I first discovered how one could distinguish between the different constituent parts of the human being. I was compelled to ask myself the question—it is now nearly forty years ago, and to-day human hearts are more than ever burdened with baffling physiological problems—I was compelled to ask myself whether on this basis it is really possible to say that the whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is bound up with the system of nerves and senses. At the same time I felt that there was a contradiction: how can thinking, feeling and willing be bound up with the nerves and senses? Naturally I cannot go into all this detail to-day, I can only indicate it; but when we come to consider the domain of therapeutics much will be explained. For instance if from the physiological standpoint we carefully and accurately study the effect of music upon the human organisation, if we know the intimate connection that exists between our experience of music and the rhythmic processes within us, if we understand the quality of soul in music itself, and study the measure of our feelings with regard to melody and harmony, we say to ourselves at first that the feeling-life of man is not altogether directly connected with the nervous system; on the contrary, it is experienced in the rhythmic system. It is only when we rise to a higher conception of what we feel at first to be directly connected in musical experience with the rhythmic system that we find that the conception of it is actually carried by the nervous system. Thus we come to the conclusion that the nervous system and the rhythmic system are really inwardly organised as two entirely separate things.

Take modern physiology with all that it has to offer, especially all that it can tell you with regard to the experiences you can have in connection with music. If you study, for instance, such a thing as the human ear as it perceives the different sounds and tones, you will certainly say that audible phenomena (i.e. one particular class of sense-perception), are first of all incorporated into the rhythmic system of man, rise rhythmically to the sense-organisation, rhythmically approach the nervous system and then become a concept created by means of the nervous-system. The rhythmic system is in immediate connection with the nervous system, which is the bearer of thought—but it is the bearer of feeling only in so far as we become aware of our feelings through thoughts and these thoughts are carried by the nervous system. We can proceed in the same way if we apply physiology to the metabolic-limb-system. It may seem strange to connect metabolism and limbs together; but you need only consider how everything that has to do with movement and which belongs to the limb-system, reacts upon the metabolism. The metabolism and the limbs taken together are certainly a uniform whole.

When we investigate these things accurately and not in a confused way, it becomes evident once more that the system of metabolism and limbs is the direct bearer of all manifestations of the human will. Once more, then, it is as follows:—When that which is taking place in the metabolic-limb-system as the bearer of the manifestations of will, works upwards, sends its force up into the rhythmic system, then it passes into the realm of feeling. We unfold our feelings in our will and our will is directly inherent in our metabolic processes—absolutely directly. We experience the will as ‘feeling’ in the rhythmic system, indirectly. And we make thoughts for ourselves about our volitional acts because the metabolic system and rhythmic system drive their forces up into the nervous system.

Thus we have guiding lines for penetrating into the human organisation. For if we first of all perceive what has been given in regard to the nervous system—(to begin with we will leave the rhythmic system lying between the two others)—then we shall find a polar antithesis in every direction: the nervous system and the metabolic system are polarically opposite. As the metabolic-limb-system builds up, so the system of nerves and senses destroys and vice versa. This and many other things demonstrate the polarity. Everything that constitutes the Ego-organisation is intimately bound up with the system of nerves and senses; everything that constitutes the etheric body is intimately bound up with the metabolic and limb system; everything that constitutes the astral body is bound up with the rhythmic system; the physical body permeates the whole, but is continually overcome by the three other members of the human organisation. Only when we observe the human organism in this way can we leam to penetrate into the so-called normal or abnormal processes.

Let us take first the organisation of nerves and senses. But first, so that I may not be misunderstood, I would like to make a short digression. A very sceptical naturalist who had heard in quite a superficial way about these members which I posit as the basis of man's nature, said that I had attempted to distinguish between “head-organisation,” “chest-organisation,” and “abdominal organisation:” thus that I had in a sense located the system of nerves and senses only in the head, the rhythmic organisation in the chest, and the metabolic-limb system in the abdomen. But that is a very unjust statement. For without separating the systems spatially, the nerves and senses may be said to be organised principally in the head, but they are also to be found in the other two systems. The rhythmic system is principally located in the middle organisation; but it again is spread over the whole man; similarly the metabolic organisation. It is not a question of making a spatial separation between the organs, but of understanding their qualitative aspect and what is living in and permeating the single organs.

When we study the system of nerves and senses from this standpoint, we find that it spreads throughout the whole organism. The eye or the ear, for example, are organised in such a way that they pre-eminently contain the nerves and senses, in a lesser degree the rhythmic, and in a still less degree the metabolic system. An organ like the kidney, for instance, does not contain so much of the nerves and senses system as of the rhythmic or metabolic organisation, yet it contains something of all three. We do not understand the human being if we say: here are sense-organs, or there are digestive organs. In reality it is quite different. A sense-organ is only principally sense-organ; every sense-organ is also in a certain way a digestive and a rhythmic organ. The kidneys or the liver are to be understood as being principally assimilatory or excretory organs. In a lesser degree they are organs of nerves and senses. If, then, we study the whole organisation of man with its single organs from the point of view of the system of nerves and senses (in its reality, and not according to the fantastic concepts often formed by physiology), we find that man ‘perceives’ by means of his separate senses—sight, hearing and so on; but we also find that he is entirely permeated by the sense-organisation. The kidney, for instance, is a sense-organ which has a delicate perception of what is taking place in the digestive and excretory processes. The liver too, is—under certain conditions—a sense-organ. The heart is in a high degree an inner sense-organ and can only be understood if it is conceived of as such.

Do not imagine that I have any intention of criticising the science of to-day; I know its worth and my desire is that our view of these things shall be firmly grounded upon it. But we must nevertheless be clear that our science is, at present, not able to penetrate fully and precisely into the being of man. If it could, it would not relate the animal organisation so closely to the human in the way it does in our time. In respect of the life of sense, the animal stands at a lower level than the human organisation. The human nerves and senses organisation is yoked to the Ego-organisation; in the animal it is yoked to the astral body. The sense-life of man is entirely different from that of the animal. When the animal perceives something with its eyes—and this can be shown by a closer study of the structure of the eye—something takes place in the animal which, so to say, goes through the whole of its body. It does not happen like that in man. In man, sense-perception remains far more at the periphery, is concentrated far more on the surface. You can understand from this that there are delicate organisations present in animals which, in the case of the higher species, are only to be found in etheric form. But in certain of the lower animals you find, for instance, the xiphoid process which is also present in higher animals but in their case it is etheric; or you may find the pecten or choroid process in the eye. The way in which these organs are permeated by the blood, shows that the eye shares in the whole organisation of the animal and is the mediator to it of a life in the circumference of its environment. Man, on the other hand, is connected with his system of nerves and senses quite differently and therefore lives, in a far higher sense than the animal, in his outer world, whereas the animal lives more within itself. But everything which is communicated through the higher spiritual members of the human being, which lives itself out through the Ego-organisation by way of the nerves and senses, requires—just because it is present within the domain of the physical body—to receive its material influences from out of the physical world.

Now if we closely study the system of nerves and senses at a time when it is functioning perfectly healthily, we find that its working depends on a certain substance, and on the processes that take place in that substance. Matter is something which is never at rest; it merely represents what is, actually, a ‘process.’ (A crystal of quartz, for instance, is only a self-contained, definitely shaped thing to us because we never perceive that it is a ‘process,’ though indeed it is one which is taking place extremely slowly.) We must penetrate further and further into the human organism and learn to understand its transformative activity. That which enters into the organism as external physical substance has to be taken up by it and overcome, in the way described in the introductory lecture.

Now it is especially interesting that when the system of nerves and senses is in a normal, i.e. a healthy state (which must of course be understood relatively), it is dependent upon a delicate process which takes place under the influence of the silicic acid which enters the organism. Silicic acid, which in the outer realm of Nature forms itself into beautiful quartz-crystals, has this peculiarity: when it penetrates into the human organism it is taken up by the processes of the nerves and senses; so that if we look at the system of nerves and senses with spiritual sight, we see a wonderfully delicate process going on in which silicic acid is active. But if we look at the other side of the question—as when I said that man has senses everywhere—then we shall notice that it is only in the periphery, that is, where the senses are especially concentrated, that the silicic acid process is intensified; when we turn to the more inner parts of the organism, to the lungs, liver or kidneys, it is far less strong, it is ‘thinner’; while in the bones it is again stronger. In this way we discover that man has a remarkable constitution.

We have, so to say, a periphery and a circumference where the senses are concentrated; then we have that which fills out the limbs and which carries the skeleton; between these we have the muscles, the glands and so on.

In that which I have described as the “circumference” and the “centralised,” we have the strongest silicic acid processes; we can follow them into the organs that lie between these two, and there we find that they have their own specific silicic acid processes but weaker than those in the circumference. Thus in respect of the outer parts, where man extends in an outgoing direction from the nerves into the senses, he needs more and more silicic acid; in the centre of his system he requires comparatively little; but where his skeleton lies, at the basis of the motor system, there again he requires more silicic acid. Directly we perceive this fact we recognize the inexactitude of many assertions of modern physiology. (And again let me emphasise that I do not wish to criticise them, but merely to make certain statements.) For instance, if we study the life of the human being according to modern physiology, we are directed to the breathing-process. In certain respects this is a complex process, but—speaking generally—it consists in taking in oxygen out of the air, and breathing out carbonic acid. That is the rhythmical process which is essentially the basis of organic life. We say that oxygen is breathed in, that it goes through certain processes described by physiology, within the organism; that it combines with carbon in the blood, and is then ejected on the breath as carbonic acid. This is perfectly correct according to a purely external method of observation. This process is, however, connected with another. We do not merely breathe in oxygen and combine it with carbon. Primarily, that is done with that portion of the oxygen which is spread over the lower part of the body; that is what we unite with the carbon and breathe out as carbonic acid.

There is another and a more delicate process behind this rhythmical occurrence. That portion of the oxygen which, in the human organisation, rises towards the head and therefore (in the particular sense which was mentioned previously) to the system of nerves and senses, unites itself with the substance we call silica, and forms silicic acid. And whereas in man the important thing for the metabolic system is the production of carbonic acid, so the important thing for the nerves and senses system is the production of silicic acid. The latter is a finer process which we are not able to verify with the coarse instruments at our disposal, though all the means are there by which it can be verified. Thus we have the coarser process on the one hand, and on the other the finer process where the oxygen combines with the silica to form silicic acid, and as such, is secreted inwardly in the human organisation.

Through this secretion of silicic acid the whole organism becomes a sense-organ—more so in the periphery, less so in the separate organs.

If we look at it this way, we can perceive the more delicate intimate structure of the human organism, and see how every organ contains, of necessity, processes related to substances each in its own distinct degree.

If we are now to grasp what health and illness really are, we must understand how these processes take place in any one organ. Suppose we take the kidney, for sake of example. Through some particular condition or other—some symptomatic complication, let us say—our diagnosis leads us to assume that the cause of an illness lies in the kidneys. If we call Spiritual Science to the aid of our diagnosis, we find that the kidney is acting too little as a sense-organ for the surrounding digestive and excretory processes; it is acting too strongly as an organ of metabolism; hence the balance is upset.

In such a case we have above all to ask: how are we to restore to it in a greater degree the character of sense-organ? We can say that because the kidney proves to be an insufficient sense-organ for the digestive and excretory processes, then we must see that it receives the necessary supply of silicic acid.

Now in the anthroposophical sense, there are three ways of administering substances that are required by a healthy human organism. The first is to give the patient a remedy by mouth. But in that case we must be guided by whether the whole digestive organism is so constituted that it can transmit the substances exactly to that spot where they are to be effective. We must know how a substance works—whether on the heart, or the lungs, and so forth, when we administer it by mouth and it passes into the digestive tract. The second way is by injections. By this means we introduce a substance directly into the rhythmic system. There, it works more as a ‘process;’ there, that which in the metabolism is a substantial organisation, is transformed at once into a rhythmic activity and we directly affect the rhythmic system. Or again, we try the third way: we prepare a substance as an ointment to be applied at the right place, or administer it in a bath; in short we apply our remedy in an external form. There are, of course, a great many different methods of doing this.

We have these three ways of applying remedies. But now let us observe the kidneys which our diagnosis reveals as having a diminished capacity as a sense-organ. We have to administer the right kind of silicic acid process. Therefore we have to be attentive, because, in the breathing process as described just now, where the oxygen combines with silica and then disperses silicic acid throughout the body, and because during that process too little silicic acid has reached the kidneys, we must do something which will attract a stronger silicic acid process to them. So we must know how to come to the assistance of the organism which has failed to do this for itself; and for this we must discover what there is externally which is the result of a process such as is wanting in the kidneys. We must search for it. How can we find ways and means to introduce just this silicic acid process into the kidneys?

And now we find that the function of the kidneys, especially as it is a sense-function, is dependent upon the astral body. The astral body is at the basis of the excretory processes and of this particular form of them. Therefore we must stimulate the astral body and moreover in such a way that it will somehow carry the silicic acid process which is administered from outside, to an organ such as the kidney. We need a remedy that, firstly, will stimulate the silicic-acid process, and, secondly, which will stimulate it precisely in the kidneys. If we seek for it in the surrounding plant world, we come upon the plant equisetum arvensæ, the ordinary field “horse-tail.” The peculiar feature of this plant is that it contains a great deal of silicic acid. If we were to give silicic acid alone it would, however, not reach the kidneys. Equisetum also contains sulphurous acid salts. Sulphurous acid salts alone work on the rhythmic system, on the excretory organs and on the kidneys in particular. When they are intimately combined as they are in Equisetum Arvensæ (we can administer it by mouth, or if that is not suitable, in either of the other ways)—then the sulphurous acid salts enable the silicic acid to find its way to the kidneys.

Here we have touched upon a single instance—a pathological condition of the kidneys. We have approached it quite methodically; we have discerned what can supply what is lacking in the kidneys; and we have erected a bridge that can be followed step by step, from pathology to therapy.

Now let us take another case. Suppose we have to do with some disturbance of the digestive system—such as we usually include under the word ‘dyspepsia.’ If we again proceed according to Spiritual Science, we shall discover that here we have to do principally with a faulty and inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Why is the Ego-organisation not acting strongly enough? That is the question. And we must search somewhere in the functional regions of the human organism for what it is that is causing this weakness of the Ego-organisation. In certain cases we find that the fault lies in the gallbladder secretions. If that is so, then we must come to the assistance of the Ego-organisation (just as we came to the assistance of the kidneys with the equisetum) by administering something which, if it reaches the required spot by being prepared in a certain way, will there strengthen the inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Thus, even as we find that the silicic acid process (which lies at the root of the nerves-and-senses system) when introduced in the right way to the kidneys enhances their sense-faculty, so we now find that such a process as the gall-bladder secretions (which corresponds primarily with the Ego-organisation) is really connected in quite a special manner (also in relation to other things) with the action of carbon. Now a remarkable thing to be observed is that if we wish to introduce carbon into the organism in the correct way for treating dyspepsia, we find that carbon—(though it is contained in every plant)—is contained in chichorium intybus (chicory) in a form that directly affects the gall-bladder. When we know how to make the correct preparation from chicorium intybus, we can lead it over into the functions of this organ as a certain form of carbon-process, in the same way as is done with regard to the silicic-acid process and the kidneys.

With these simple examples—which are applicable either to slight or in certain circumstances to very severe cases of illness—I have tried to indicate how, by a spiritual-scientific observation of the human organism on the one hand, and on the other of the different natural creations and their respective interchanges with each other, there can be brought about firstly an understanding of the processes of illness, and secondly an understanding of what is required in order to reverse the direction of those processes. Healing becomes thereby a penetrating Art. This is what can be achieved for the art of medicine, the art of Healing, by the kind of scientific research that is called Anthroposophy. There is nothing of the nature of fantasy about it. It is that which will bring research to the point of extreme exactitude with regard to the observation of the whole human being, both physically, psychically and spiritually. The condition of illness in man depends upon the respective activity of the physical, the psychic and the spiritual. And because man's constitution consists of nerves and senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic and limb system, we are enabled also to penetrate into the different processes and their degrees of activity. We learn to know how a sense-function is present in the kidneys as soon as we direct our attention to the essential nature of sense-functions; otherwise, we only seek to discover sense-functions under their cruder aspect as they appear in the senses themselves. Now however, we become able to comprehend illness as such.

I have already said that in the metabolic and limb system processes take place which are the opposite of those that take place in the system of nerves and senses. But it can happen that processes which primarily are also nerves and senses processes, and are, for instance, proper to the nerves of the head where they are ‘normal’—it can happen that these processes can in a certain sense become dislodged by the metabolic and limb system; that through an abnormality of the astral body and Ego-organisation in the metabolic-limb-system something can happen which would be ‘ correct’ or ‘normal’ only if taking place in the system of nerves and senses. That is to say, what is right for one system can be in another system productive of metamorphosis or disease. So that a process which properly belongs, for instance, to the system of nerves and senses makes its appearance in another system, and is then a process of disease. An example of this is found in typhoid fever. Typhoid represents a process which belongs properly to the nervous system. While it should play its part there in the physical organisation, it plays its part as a matter of fact in the region of the metabolic system within the etheric organisation—within the etheric body—works over into the physical body and appears there as typhoid. Here we see into the nature of the onset of illness. Or it can also happen that the dynamic force, or those forces which are active in a sense-organ—(and must be active there in a certain degree in order that a sense-organ as such may arise)—become active somewhere where they should not. That which works in a sense-organ can be in some way or another transformed in its activity elsewhere. Let us take the activity of the ear. Instead of remaining in the system of nerves and senses, it obtrudes itself (and this under circumstances which can also be described) in another place—for example in the metabolic system where this is connected with the rhythmic system. Then there arises, in the wrong place, an abnormal tendency to produce a sense-organ; and this manifests itself as carcinoma—as a cancerous growth. It is only when we can look in this way into the human organism that we can perceive that carcinoma represents a certain tendency, displaced in respect of the systems, to the formation of a sense organ.

When we speak of the fertilisation of medicine through Anthroposophy, it is a question of learning how abnormal conditions in the human organism arise from the fact that what is normal to one system transplants itself into another. And only by perceiving the matter thus is one in a position really to understand the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, and so to make the bridge from pathology to therapy, from observation of the patient to healing the patient.

When these things are represented as a connected whole, it will be seen how nothing that is said from this standpoint can in any way contradict modern medicine. As a first step in this direction I hope that very soon now the book [Fundamentals of Therapy, by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman. (Anthroposophical Publishing Co.) Price 7/6.] will be published that has been written by me in collaboration with Dr. Wegman, the Director of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim. This book will present what can be given from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, not as a contradiction of modern medicine but as an extension of it. People will then be able to convince themselves that it has nothing to do with the kind of superficiality which is so prevalent to-day. This book will show, in a way that will be justified by modern science, the fruitfulness that can enter into the art of healing by means of spiritual scientific investigation. Precisely when these things can be followed up more and more in detail and with scientific conscientiousness, will those efforts be acknowledged which are being made by such an Institution as the International laboratories of Arlesheim, where a whole range of new remedies is being prepared in accordance with the principles here set forth.

In the third lecture it will be my endeavour to consolidate still further (in so far as that can be done here in a popular manner), what has already been indicated as a rational therapy, by citing certain special cases of illness and the way in which they can be cured. Anyone who can really perceive what is meant will certainly not have any fear that the things stated cannot be subjected to serious test. We know that it will be the same in this as in all other domains of Anthroposophy; to begin with, there will be rebuffs, abuse and criticism by those who do not know it in detail. But those who do learn to know it in detail will stop their abuse. Therefore, in my third lecture I will go more into the particulars which will show that we are not evading modern science but are in full agreement with it, and that we proceed from the desire to enlarge the boundaries of science by spiritual knowledge in the sphere of anthroposophical medicine.

Only when this is understood will the art of healing stand upon its true foundations. For the art of healing concerns man. Man is a being of body, soul and Spirit. A real medicine can therefore only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces man in respect of all three—in respect of body, soul and Spirit.

In the first two lectures I dealt with the general principles by means of which the knowledge of healing can be made fruitful through anthroposophical research, and to-day I would like to enlarge upon this by giving certain details—such details as will at the same time show that in so far as Anthroposophy works into practical life, it will lead also to a "handling," if I may use the expression, of life as a whole which will be in accordance with reality.

In the previous lectures I spoke of the way in which Anthroposophy must necessarily regard the constitution of the physical body which we know by means of our senses, but the substance of which is continually being thrown off and newly constructed during the course of life. Within this physical body lives the so-called etheric or life-body, which contains the forces of growth and of nourishment and which man possesses in common with the plants. We must also recognise that man is the bearer of sentient life—that life which inwardly reflects the outer world. This is the astral body. (As I said before, we need not take exception to the terminology but simply accept it in the sense in which it is here explained.) Man has this astral body in common with the animal kingdom, but he excels all other kingdoms of Nature in the surrounding world inasmuch as he possesses the Ego-organisation.

If we merely speak of these constituent parts of the human being in a general way, we shall never come to the point of being able to estimate them at their true value. If, however, we perceive the real significance of these four members of our being, then we have no longer a mere philosophically conceived classification, or a mere division of phenomena before us, and we realise that such a conception really adds something to our comprehension of the being of man. We need only consider a daily event of human life—the interchange of waking and sleeping—and we shall at once understand the significance of this threefold constitution.

Every day we observe the human being passing from that condition wherein he has an inner impulse to move his limbs and when he takes in the impressions of the outer world so that he may work them over within himself, into that other condition where he lies motionless in sleep and his consciousness (if it does not rise to the point of dream) sinks down into an inner, indefinite darkness. If we refuse to admit that the functions of willing, feeling and thinking are annihilated in sleep and simply appear again when he wakes, we must ask ourselves: What is the relation of waking man to sleeping man ?

During sleep, the astral body and Ego-organisation have separated from the physical body and the etheric body. As soon as we have realised that the astral body and Ego-organisation—the soul-and-Spirit—separate from man's physical organisation during sleep, we come to something else, namely, that this radical extraction during sleep can also occur in a lesser degree—partially—during the waking state. Certain conditions call forth a certain tendency to sleep but do not bring about total sleep—I mean conditions of faintness, unconsciousness and the like. These are conditions in which the human being commences to sleep but does not achieve it completely; he hovers, as it were, between sleeping and waking.

In order to understand such conditions we must be able to look into the nature of the human being. We must remind ourselves of what was said in the last lecture when the results of anthroposophical research were explained. I said that it is possible to divide the whole organisation of man into three systems: (1) the nerves and senses; (2) the rhythmic system (which includes all rhythmical processes); (3) metabolic-limb system. I also said that the metabolic-limb system is the polar antithesis of the system of nerves and senses, while the rhythmic system is the mediator between the two. Each of these three systems is permeated by the four members of man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego-organisation. Now the constitution of man is very complicated. It cannot be said that in sleep the astral body and Ego-organisation pass entirely out of the physical and etheric bodies. It can so happen that the organism of nerves and senses is only partially forsaken by the higher principles. Then, because the system of nerves and senses has its main seat in the head, the head is constrained to develop something which gives an inclination towards sleep. Yet the man is not really asleep, for his metabolic-limb system and his rhythmic system still contain the astral body and Ego-organisation. These have only left the head. Hence there arises a state of dullness, or faintness, while the rest of the organism functions as in waking life. What I have here described does not necessarily arise from within; it can occur when something is applied from without—for instance if a certain quantity of lead is administered or lead combined with some other substance. Comatose states or vertigo, which are caused by the separation of the astral body and Ego-organisation from the head, can be brought about by the administration of certain quantities of lead. We see, therefore, that this substance, this lead, when it is taken inwardly, drives the astral body and Ego out of the head. Here we look deeply into the human organisation in its relation to the surrounding world; we see in this way that it can become dependent upon what is taken in by way of substance.

But now let us suppose that a person exhibits the opposite condition—that his astral body and Ego cling too firmly to his head, work too strongly upon it. This becomes clear to us when we examine how the head-organisation works upon the whole man, when we study how the organism builds itself up. We see all the hard parts forming themselves—the bony structures; we see the other softer parts, the muscles and so on. If we study man's whole development from childhood onwards, we find that that part of the organism which shows us, first by its outer shape how it inclines towards ossification, and has its essential nature in its bony consistency—namely the head—we find that the head throws out, during the course of its development, precisely those forces which work formatively in respect of the whole skeleton and which therefore tend to harden and stiffen the human being. We gradually come to know what tasks the Ego-organisation and astral body perform when they permeate the head; they work in such a way that the forces which harden man inwardly, which cause the hard parts of his being to separate from the more fluid organisation, stream out from his head. Now if the astral body and the Ego-organisation work too strongly in the head, the hardening forces stream out too vigorously and the result is what we see in the ageing organisation, when a tendency to bone-formation is present. This tendency manifests as arterio-sclerosis, where chalky deposits are present in the arteries. In sclerosis the stiffening, hardening principle, which otherwise works into the bones, works into the whole organism. We have therefore an excessively strong working of the Ego-organisation and the astral body; they impress themselves too deeply into the organism.

At this point the conception of the astral body begins to be a very real factor. For, if we administer lead to the organism in its normal condition, we drive the astral body and Ego out of the head. But if these principles are too closely bound to the head and we give a proper dose of lead, we are acting rightly because then we loosen the astral forces and the Ego to some extent from the head and thus we can combat sclerosis. Here we see how external influences can work upon this connection of the different members of man's being. If we administer lead to the healthy organism, we can bring it to the point of illness; comatose conditions or faintness are caused because the astral body and the Ego are separated from it, giving rise to a condition which in the ordinary course of events is only there in sleep. If, however, the astral body and the Ego are too closely united with the head, the human being is over-wakeful and the effect of this continued over-wakefulness is an inward hardening. The ultimate consequence will be sclerosis and in this case the right thing to do is to drive the astral body and the Ego slightly out of the lead. Thus we begin to understand the inner working of the remedy directly we take the different members of man's being into account.

Now let us turn to the metabolic-limb system. When we are sound asleep, our astral body and Ego have separated from this system. But we can drive them out of this system without driving them out of the head; just as we drive them out of the head by means of lead and cause comatose conditions, etc., so by giving a certain dosage of silver or some combination of silver, we can drive the astral body and Ego out of the metabolic-limb system. We then get corresponding manifestations in the digestion—solidifying of the excreta and other disturbances of the digestive tract.

But suppose the astral body and Ego are working too actively in the digestive organs. Now the astral body and Ego stimulate the digestive functions precisely in the metabolic-limb system. If they work too strongly, penetrate too deeply, then there is excessive digestive activity. There is a tendency to diarrhoea and other kindred symptoms which are the result of too rapid and superficial digestion.

Now this is connected with something else, namely that in this condition the metabolic-limb system comes too much to the fore. In the human organism everything works together. If the metabolic-limb system predominates, it also works too strongly—works moreover not only on the rhythmic organisation but also on the head-organisation, principally, however, on the former; for the digestive organisation continues on into the rhythmic system. The products of digestion are transformed in the blood. The rhythm of the blood is dependent upon what enters it by way of material substances. If, then, there is excessive activity on the part of the astral body and Ego, symptoms of fever and a rise of temperature will occur. Now if we know that the astral body and the Ego-organisation are driven out of the metabolic-limb system by the administration of a certain dosage of silver, we know further that if the astral organism and the Ego-organisation are too deeply embedded in the metabolic-limb system, we can raise them out of the latter by giving a remedy consisting of silver or silver combined with some other substance.

This shows us how we can master these connections within the being of man. Spiritual Science therefore makes researches into the whole of Nature. In the last lecture [See Anthroposophy, Midsummer, 1928.] I attempted to show, in principle, how this can be done in respect of the plants. To-day I have explained how it can be done in respect of two mineral substances, lead and silver. We gain an insight into the relation between the human organism and its surroundings by directing our attention to the manner in which these different substances in the outer world affect the different members of the constitution of man.

We will now take an example which shows that it is possible, out of an inner insight into the nature of the activity of the human organisation, to pass from the realm of pathology to an understanding of therapy.

We have a certain remedy continually present within us. The being of man requires healing all the time. The natural inclination is always for the Ego-organisation and the astral body to press too strongly into the physical body and the etheric body. Man would prefer to look out into the world, not clearly, but always more or less dully; he would prefer to be always at rest. As a matter of fact, he suffers from a constant illness: the 'desire to rest.' He must be cured of this, for he is only well if his organism is constantly being cured. For the purpose of this cure, he has iron in the blood.

Iron is a metal which works on the organism in such a way that the astral body and Ego are prevented from being too strongly bound to the physical and etheric bodies. There is really a continual healing going on within man, an ' iron-cure.' The moment the human organism contains too little iron, there is a longing for rest, a feeling of slackness. Directly there is too much iron, an involuntary over-activity and restlessness sets in. Iron regulates the connection between physical body and etheric body on the one hand, and the astral body and Ego-organisation on the other. Therefore if there is any disturbance of this connection it may be said that an increase or a decrease of the iron-content in the organism will restore the right relation.

Now let us observe a certain kind of illness that is not of particular importance in medicine. We can quite well understand why not. It is, to begin with, apparently so intricate that its cause is not easy to discover. And so every possible kind of remedy is given for this illness, to which, as I have said, medicine gives little heed although it is very unpleasant for the sufferer—I mean migraine.

In the head-organisation we observe, first of all, the continuations of the sense-nerves which are most wonderfully intertwined and interwoven. The nerves as they continue on into the centre of the brain from the senses, form a marvellous structure. It represents the highest point of perfection in respect of the physical organisation, for there the Ego of man impresses the most intense form of its activity upon the physical body. The way in which the nerves pass inwards from the senses and are linked together, bringing about something like an inner articulation within the organism, places the human organism at a much higher level than the animal. And it is possible, just because the Ego-organisation must take hold at this point in order to control this marvellous structure, that it may occasionally fail and then that part of the physical organisation gets left to itself. It may happen that the Ego-organisation is not powerful enough to permeate this so-called “white matter” of the brain or to organise it thoroughly.

Now the white matter of the brain is surrounded by the grey matter—a substance which is far less delicately organised but which is indeed regarded by ordinary physiology as being the more important of the two. This it is not, for the reason that it is connected much more with nutrition. We have a far more mobile activity in respect of nutrition—of inner accumulation of substance—in the grey brain-matter, than in the white matter which lies in the middle and which in a much greater degree is a foundation for the Spiritual.

Now everything in the human organism belongs together, for every member works upon every other. Directly, therefore, that the Ego begins to withdraw to some extent from the central—the white brain-substance—the grey matter becomes disordered. The astral body and the etheric body can no longer take proper hold of the grey matter; and so the whole of the interior of the head gets out of order. The Ego-organisation withdraws from the central brain, the astral organisation withdraws more from the periphery of the brain; and the whole organisation of the head is dislocated. The central brain begins to be less serviceable for the forming of concepts, more akin to the grey matter, developing a kind of digestive process which it ought not to do; the grey matter begins to unfold an excessively strong digestive process. And then foreign bodies are absorbed; a strong excretory process permeates the brain. All this reacts upon the finer breathing processes, principally, however, upon the rhythmic processes of the blood-circulation. Thus we get, not perhaps a very deeply penetrating, but still a very significant disorder arising in the human organism and the question is: How are we to restore the Ego-organisation to the system of nerves and senses? How are we to drive the Ego back again to the place it has left—into the central part of the brain ?

This we can do if we administer a substance of which I spoke in the earlier lectures, namely, silicic acid. If, however, we were to give only silicic acid, we should, it is true, send back the Ego into the central nerves-and-senses system in the head, but we should leave the surrounding part, i.e., the grey matter of the brain, untouched. Thus we must at the same time so regulate the digestive process of the grey matter that it no longer ' overflows,' that it incorporates itself rhythmically into the whole organisation of the human being. Therefore we must simultaneously administer iron — which is there in order to regulate these connections—so that the rhythmic organisation shall be placed once more in its right relation to the system lying at the basis of spiritual activity.

At the same time, however, there will be irregularities in the ' digestive ' processes in the larger brain. In the organism, nothing takes place in one system of organs without influencing others. Therefore in this case, slight and delicate disorders will arise in the digestive system as a whole. Once more, if we study the connections between outer substances and the human organism, we find that sulphur and combinations of sulphur work in such a way that starting from the digestive system they bring about a regularising of the whole process of digestion.

We have now three standpoints from which migraine can be considered: (1) regulation of the digestion, the disorder of which is evident in the irregular digestive process of the brain; (2) regulation of the nervous and sensory activity of the Ego by means of silicic acid; (3) regulation of the disordered rhythm of the circulatory system by the administration of iron. In this way we are able to survey the whole process. As I have said, migraine is an ailment somewhat despised by ordinary medicine but it is by no means so complicated as it appears when we really penetrate into the nature of the human organism. Indeed we discover that the organism itself calls upon us to administer a preparation of silicic acid, sulphur and iron—combined in a certain way. We then obtain a remedy for migraine (Biodoron) which, however, also has the effect of regulating the influence of the Ego-organisation, causing it to take hold of the organism and to work upon everything of the nature of disturbed rhythm in the blood-circulation and also upon all that is taking place as the out-streaming digestive process in the organism.

Migraine is only a symptom of the fact that the etheric body, astral body and Ego are not working properly in the physical body. Therefore our remedy for migraine is peculiarly adapted to restore the co-operation of these three higher principles with the physical. When these members are not working properly together, our remedy—which is not a mere 'cure for headache'—can help a patient under all circumstances. It is a remedy for migraine just because it attacks the most radical symptoms; and it is especially by speaking of this remedy that I can make clear to you the anthroposophical principles of therapy, the essential nature of illness and how to prepare a medicament.

Before such remedies can be prepared we must understand the relationship that exists between the human organism and the surrounding world. But for this it is necessary to approach the study of the nature of this relationship in all seriousness. In the last lecture, in indicating how we arrive at plant-remedies, I mentioned equisetum arvensæ as an example. We can say of every plant that it works in such and such a way on this or that organ. But as we study these things we must be quite clear that a plant—growing here or there in Nature—is not at all the same in Spring as it is in Autumn. In Spring we have a sprouting and growing plant before us—a plant that contains the physical and ethereal forces just as man contains them. If, then, we administer a substance from this plant to the organism we shall be able to produce an especially strong effect upon the physical body and etheric body. If, however, we leave the plant growing all through the Summer and pluck it when Autumn is drawing near, then we have a plant which is on the point of drying up and shrivelling.

Now let us look again at the human organism. Throughout the development of the physical body there is a budding and sprouting caused by the working of the etheric body. The astral body and the Ego-organisation cause disintegration. All the time in the physical body there is a budding and sprouting life, caused by the etheric body. If this process alone were to take place in the human being, he would never be able to unfold self-consciousness; for the more the growth-forces are stimulated, the more this budding and sprouting takes place, the more we lack self-possession. When the astral organism and Ego-organisation separate from the other two members in sleep, we are unconscious. The forces which build man up, which cause growth and give rise to the process of nutrition do not bring him to the point where he can feel and think. On the contrary, to be able to feel and think, something in the organism must be destroyed. This is the work of the astral body and the Ego-organisation. They bring about a continual Autumn in man. The physical organisation and etheric body bring about a continual Spring—a budding and sprouting life—but no self-consciousness, nothing of the nature of soul and Spirit. The astral body and the Ego-organisation destroy; they cause the physical body to dry up and harden. But this has to be. The physical body has continually to oscillate between integration and disintegration. Outside in Nature we find the forces alternating between Spring and Autumn. In man too, there is rhythm; while he is asleep, it is wholly Spring for him—the physical and etheric bodies bud and blossom; when he is awake the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are thrust back, hemmed in, and conscious self-possession sets in—Autumn and Winter are there.

By this we can see how superficial it is to base our judgments merely on outer analogies. External observation might well result in describing the waking life of man as ' Spring ' and ' Summer ' and in speaking of sleep as analogous to Winter. But in reality this is not correct. When we fall asleep, the astral body and the Ego pass out and the physical-etheric part of our being begins to bud and blossom; the forces of the etheric body are very active. It is a condition of Spring and Summer. If we could look back upon our physical and etheric bodies and observe what is going on when the astral body and Ego have forsaken them, we should be able to describe this budding and sprouting, and the moment of waking would seem to be like the approach of Autumn. But this, of course, requires the faculty of spiritual perception. It cannot be seen with physical eyes.

Now let us imagine that we are looking for plant-remedies. Gentians gathered in the Spring will have a healing influence on certain forms of dyspepsia. If we gather the plant in the Spring and then prepare it as a medicament, we shall be able to work upon disturbed forces of nutrition. The roots of the gentian should be boiled and given in order to regulate the forces of nutrition. But if we give gentian roots that have been dug up in the Autumn when the plant as a whole is decaying, when its forces will resemble the functions performed by the astral body, we shall not effect any cure; on the contrary, we shall rather increase the irregularity in the digestive process. It is not enough simply to know that any particular plant is a remedy for this or that ailment; we must also know when the plant must be gathered if it is to act as a remedy.

We must therefore observe the whole being and becoming of Nature if we are to apply effective plant-remedies and develop a rational therapy. We must also know in making up our preparations that it is not the same to gather the plants in the Autumn as to gather and administer them in the Spring. When we are preparing medicaments we must also learn to know what it means if we pick gentian, for instance, in the first weeks of the month of May; for what man bears within him during the course of twenty-four hours, namely Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, is spread in Nature over a period of 365 days. The process which is enacted in the human being in a period of 24 hours, needs 365 days in Nature.

By this you will see what is involved when we speak of applying anthroposophical principles to therapy. At the present time we have a very serviceable science of healing, and as I have said again and again, what Anthroposophy has to give in respect of an art of healing must certainly not come into opposition with what is given by the recognised medicine of to-day. Anthroposophical medicine will stand firmly on the foundations of modern medical science in so far as these foundations are justified. But something more has to be added, namely spiritual insight into the being of man.

Consider once more what I have said in these lectures about the system of nerves and senses being permeated by all four members—by the physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. The metabolic-limb system is also permeated by all four members. But each system is permeated by the other members in a different way. In the metabolic-limb system, the Ego-organisation functions in the activity of will. Everything that causes man and his whole organism to move is contained in the metabolic-limb system; everything that leaves him at rest and fills him with inner experiences, concepts, thoughts and feelings, is contained in the system of nerves and senses. An essential difference is shown here. In the system of nerves and senses, the physical body and etheric body are of far greater importance than the Ego and astral organisations, while in the metabolic-limb system it is these higher members that are essential. Therefore if the Ego and astral body work too strongly in the nerves and senses, something will arise which this latter system then drives into the other members of the being of man.

Over-emphasis of the Ego and astral organisations within the nerves and senses drives this latter system somehow or other into the metabolic-limb system. There are various ways in which this may take place; the result is what may—in a very general sense—be described as ' swellings.' We learn to understand the nature of these swellings when we realise that because of excessive activity of the Ego or the astral body, the system of nerves and senses is driven into the rest of the organism.

And now consider the opposite condition: the Ego and astral body withdraw from the metabolic-limb system; the physical and etheric organisations become too strong—they radiate into the system of nerves and senses and flood it with those processes which properly belong to the metabolic-limb system: the result is an inflammatory condition. Now we can understand that swellings and conditions of inflammation present a certain polaric contrast to one another. If, then, we know how to drive back the system of nerves and senses when it is beginning to be active somewhere in the metabolic-limb system, we shall arrive at a possible means of healing.

Now one instance where the system of nerves and senses is working with terrible consequences in some region of the metabolic-limb system, is carcinoma. Here there is evidence that the system of nerves and senses has entered into the metabolic-limb organisation and is making itself effective there. In my second lecture I spoke of a tendency to the formation of a sense-organ which can arise at the wrong place, within the metabolic-limb system. The ear, when it is formed in the right place, is normal; but if a tendency to ear-formation or a tendency to form any other sense-organ—even in the very slightest degree—occurs in the wrong place, then we have to do with carcinomatous growth. We must work against this tendency of the human organism, but a very deep understanding of the whole of the evolution of the world and man is necessary here.

If you study anthroposophical literature, you will find that it gives quite different teaching in regard to cosmology to that given by materialistic science. You will find it stated that the creation of our Earth was preceded by another creation when man did not as yet exist in his present form, but was, in certain respects, still spiritually higher than the animal kingdom. The senses of man, as we know them, did not exist. They only arose in their perfected state during Earth-evolution. As tendencies, of course, they were there long before, but in their final form, as they now are, penetrated by the Ego organisation, they did not come into being until the Earth was formed. The human Ego 'shot,' as it were, into eyes, ears and the other senses during this period. Hence if the Ego-organisation becomes too active, a sense does not only form in the organism in a normal way but there is too great a general tendency to create senses. This results in carcinoma. What, then, must we do in order to discover a remedy for this disease? We must go back to earlier conditions of Earth-development and search for something that is a last remnant, a heritage, from earlier periods of evolution. We find such a remnant in plants that are parasitic—such as viscum: forms that grow as the mistletoe grows upon trees—forms that have not come to the point of being able to root themselves in the Earth as such but must feed upon what is living. Why must they do this? Because they have, as a matter of fact, evolved before our Earth assumed its solid, mineral form. We have in mistletoe to-day something that could not become a pure Earth-form; it had to take root upon a plant of another character—because the mineral kingdom was the latest of the kingdoms to evolve upon the Earth. In the substance of mistletoe we have something which, if it is prepared in the proper way, will have a beneficial effect upon carcinoma and work in the direction of driving the misplaced formation of a sense-organ out of the human organism.

If we penetrate into Nature, it is possible to fight against those things which, appearing in the form of some illness, have fallen away from their normal evolution. Man is too much ' Earth ' when he develops cancer; he brings forth the Earth-forces too strongly within his being. We must combat these exaggerated Earth-forces with something that is the result of a state of evolution when the mineral kingdom and the present Earth were not yet in existence. Therefore, working on the basis of anthroposophical research, we make a special preparation from viscum.

I have now put certain brief details before you. I could add a great deal more, for we have already worked out and produced a number of remedies. Let me, for example, mention the following. If the metabolic system radiates into the extreme periphery of the senses-organisation, a certain form of illness is produced—so-called hay-fever. And here we have the opposite of what I described just now. When the system of nerves and senses slips downwards so to speak into the metabolic-limb system, this gives rise to swellings. On the other hand, if the metabolic-limb system enters into the region of nerves and senses, we get such manifestations as are present, for example, in hay-fever. In this case it is a question of paralysing those centrifugal processes where the metabolic-limb system is induced too strongly towards the periphery of the organism, by giving something which will stem back the etheric forces. We try to do this with a preparation (Gencydo) made from fruits which are covered with rind; the forces connected with this rind-formation have the effect of driving back the etheric forces in the metabolism. The excessively active centrifugal forces which give rise to hay-fever are combated by strong centripetal forces. Both the pathological and therapeutical processes can be quite clearly perceived. And indeed we find that the best results are obtained with our remedies precisely in those cases that are the most resistant to treatment at the present time. Instances of the treatment of hay-fever show that excellent results have been obtained.

And so I could give you many details to show that the insight into the nature of man which is gained by anthroposophical research builds the bridge between pathology and therapy. For how, in the last resort, do the Ego and astral organism work? They destroy. And because of this destructive process we are beings of soul and Spirit. When something is being disintegrated, a purely poisonous activity is taking place and that destroys the organs. If an organ becomes rampant or hypertrophied, we must disintegrate it. The disintegrative activity belongs to the astral body and Ego. Poisons in an external form—they may be either metallic or vegetable poisons—are, in their effect upon the human organism, related to the astral body and Ego. We must realise to what extent a poisonous process is taking place in the human organism inasmuch as the Ego and astral body are at work. There is a correspondence between the budding and sprouting forces of the plants—which we eat without harm—and the physical and etheric forces in the human being; and we must learn to recognise the correspondence between the activity of the Ego and the astral body upon the human organism and the working of the forces and substances of those plants which we cannot eat because they are harmful but which, because they resemble the normally destructive processes in man, can work as remedies.

Thus we learn to divide the whole of Nature, firstly into those forms of life which resemble our physical and etheric bodies and which we eat for the purposes of growth and development; and secondly into the destructive elements, i.e., the poisonous forces which resemble the working of astral body and Ego-organisation. If we understand the four members of man's being in this sense, we shall regard the polarity between the nutritious substances and the poisonous substances quite differently. The study of illness will then be a continuation of the study of Nature. By an insight into both health and disease—a spiritual insight—our whole conception of Nature will be immeasurably enriched. But there is one condition attached to such study. In our present age, people prefer to embark upon some particular study when the object in question is quite still. They like to bring this object as far as possible into a state of complete rest so that the longest possible time can be spent in observing it. Anthroposophy, on the contrary, prefers that whatever is being studied should be as far as possible in a state of movement; everything must be mobile and living, observed in the presence of Spirit, for only so do we draw near to life and reality. To this we must add something else, and that is the courage to heal. This courage is just as necessary as the actual knowledge of how to heal; it is not nebulous or fantastic optimism but a feeling of certainty which makes us feel in any case of illness: 'I have insight into this and I will try to cure it.' Great things result from this. But if we are to gain this certainty, it is above all necessary to have the courage to win through to an understanding of the being of man and of Nature. Naturally, therefore, the kind of remedies that we obtain can only come from a living contact with medicine.

Close to the Goetheanum, where we are striving for anthroposophical knowledge which shall satisfy the souls of men, there is a centre which is devoted to healing—near to the Mystery-centre, a therapeutical centre, because a comprehensive knowledge of the relation between the human being and the world must include not only an understanding of the healing processes but also of the processes of disease. A profound insight into the Cosmos is only possible when we are able to survey not only the tendencies which lead to sickness but equally those which lead to health.

If the forces connected with growth in the organism were not continually being repressed, man's being of soul and Spirit could never function. The very manifestations which in the normal condition of mankind turn to illness, to retrogression of development, must indeed exist in order that he may become a thinking being. If man could not be ill, he could not be a spiritual being. If the functions of thinking, feeling and willing manifest in an abnormal form, man falls ill. The liver and kidneys must carry out the very same processes that give rise to thinking, to feeling and to willing; but these processes lead to disease when they arise in exaggerated form. The fact that man can be ill makes it also possible for him to be a being who can think, feel and will.

Anthroposophical science can enrich the science of healing with spiritual knowledge as I have shown; but it can also do so because it fills the doctor with devotion and readiness for self-sacrifice. Anthroposophy not only deepens our thinking, our intellectuality, but also our feeling—indeed our whole nature. The answer to the question: What can the Art of Healing gain through Spiritual Science? is this: the doctor, as a healer, can become wholly man; not merely one who thinks about a case of illness with his head but who has inner realisation of the state of illness, knowing that to heal is a noble mission. The doctor will only find the right place for his profession in the social order when he perceives that illness is the shadow-side of spiritual development. In order to understand the shadow he must also gaze upon the light—upon the nature and the being of the spiritual processes themselves. If the doctor learns thus to behold spiritual processes, to behold the light that is working in the being of man, he will be able to judge of the shadow. Wherever there is light, there must be shadow; wherever there is spiritual development there must be manifestations of illness as its shadow-forms. Only he can master them who can truly gaze upon the light.

This, then, is what Anthroposophy can give to the doctor and to the art of healing.

The Anthroposophical Society here has invited me to give a course of lectures on Education and has expressed the wish that I should also give one or two Public Lectures dealing with anthroposophical Spiritual Science in relation to the Art of Healing.

It will be necessary for me to begin this evening with a sort of introductory lecture, and deal with the actual subject itself in the two following lectures. I must do this because there are so many people in the audience to whom Anthroposophy is still but little known; and lectures dealing with a special subject would remain rather in the air if I did not begin with some introductory remarks treating of Anthroposophy in general before coming to definite observations in the domain of medicine.

Anthroposophy is indeed not as is so often said of it, some kind of craze, or a sect; it stands for a serious and scientifically-considered conception of the world; but a conception of the world which is applied just as seriously to the spiritual domain as we are accustomed to apply our modern scientific methods to the material domain. Now it might appear to begin with to many people that any suggestion of the spiritual at once introduces something unscientific, for the reason that people are generally inclined to the idea that only those things can be grasped scientifically which can be experienced by the senses, and carried further by means of the reason and intellect. It is the opinion of many people that directly we step over into the spiritual it implies renunciation of Science. It is said that decisions with regard to spiritual questions rest upon subjective opinion, upon a kind of mystical feeling, which everyone must manufacture for himself; “faith” must take the place of scientific knowledge. The task of this introductory lecture shall be to show that this is not the case.

Above all, Anthroposophy does not set out to be “Science” in the generally-accepted sense of the word as something that lies apart from ordinary life and is practised by single individuals who are preparing for some specialised scientific career; on the contrary, it is a conception of the world which can be of value for the mind of every human being who has a longing to find the answers to questions regarding the meaning of life, the duties of life, the operation of the spiritual and material forces of life, and how to turn this knowledge to account. Hitherto in the Anthroposophical field there has been unfailing success in achieving entirely practical methods of applying Anthroposophical principles, more especially in the sphere of education. We have founded schools, which are organised on the basis of these conceptions. And in many well-recognized ways we have succeeded in a similar manner with regard to the art of healing. Anthroposophy does not wish to create obstacles in any sphere, or to appear in opposition to anything that is in the nature of “recognized science;” it will have nothing to do with dilettantism. It is above all anxious that those who wish earnestly to work out what has been given as Anthroposophical knowledge, shall prize and admire all the great achievements that have resulted—with such fullness in recent times—from every kind of scientific endeavour. Therefore there can be no question (in the medical sphere or any other) of anything like dilettantism, nor of any opposition to modern science. On the contrary, it will be shown how by following certain spiritual methods one is in a position to add something to that which is already accepted, and which can only be added when the work of serious investigation is extended into the spiritual world itself.

Anthroposophy can do this because it strives after other kinds of knowledge which, do not prevail in ordinary life or in ordinary science. In ordinary life, as in our customary scientific methods, we make use of such knowledge which we attain when in the course of our development we add to our inherited tendencies and capabilities what we can gain through the usual lower or higher grades of schooling, and which together make us into ripe human beings in the sense in which that is understood to-day. But Anthroposophy goes further than this; it desires to start from what I may call intellectual modesty. And this intellectual modesty (which must be there to begin with if we are to develop a feeling for Anthroposophy) I should like to characterise in the following manner.

Let us consider the development of a human being from earliest childhood onwards. The child first appears in the world showing outwardly in its life and inwardly in its soul nothing of that by which a fully-developed human being finds his orientation in the world through actions and knowledge. There must be education and upbringing in order to draw out of the childlike soul and bodily organism those capacities which have been brought into the world in a dormant or “unripe” state. And we all admit that we cannot in the true sense of the word become active inhabitants of the world if we do not add to our inherited tendencies all those things which can only come by a process of unfolding and drawing them out. Then sooner or later, according to whether we have completed a higher or lower grade of education, we step out into life, having a particular relation to life, having the possibility of unfolding a certain consciousness with regard to our surroundings. Now any one who approaches the intentions of Anthroposophy with true understanding, will say: Why should it not be possible—seeing that it is possible for a child to become something entirely different when its soul-qualities are developed—for such a thing to take place also in a man who is “ripe” according to the standard of to-day? Why should not a man who enters the world fully equipped with the best modern education, also contain hidden capacities in his soul which can be developed further, so that he can progress by means of this development to still further knowledge, and to a practical conduct of life which to some extent can be a continuation of that which has brought him as far as the ordinary state of consciousness?

Therefore in Anthroposophy we undertake a kind of “self-development”—which is to lead out beyond the ordinary condition of consciousness.

There are three faculties in the human soul which are developed normally in life up to a certain point, but which we can unfold further; and Anthroposophy provides the only means in this our modern age of culture and civilisation which will create the necessary stimulus for the further development of these faculties. All three faculties can be so transformed as to become the faculties of a higher kind of knowledge.

First there is the Thinking. In the culture that we have acquired we use our thinking in such a way that we give ourselves over quite passively to the world. Indeed, Science itself demands that we should employ the least possible inner activity in our thinking, and that that which exists in the outer world should only speak to us through the observation of our senses; in fact that we must simply give ourselves over altogether to our sense-perceptions. We maintain that whenever we go beyond this passivity we are only led into dreams and fantastic notions. But where Anthroposophy is concerned, there is no question of fantasy or dreaminess, but of the exact opposite; we are guided to an inner activity which is as clear as any method leading maybe to the attainment of mathematics or geometry. In fact we comport ourselves with regard to Anthroposophy precisely in the same way as we do with regard to mathematics or geometry, only in Anthroposophy we are not developing any special attribute, but on the contrary, every faculty that is connected with human hearts and minds—the whole sum of what is human. And the first thing that has to be done is something which, if people are only sufficiently free from prejudice, can be readily comprehended by everyone. It is simply that the capacity and the force of Thinking should be directed for a time not in order to grasp or understand some external thing, but just in order to allow a thought to remain present in the soul—such a thought as may be easily observed in its totality—and to give oneself up entirely to this thought for a certain length of time.

I will describe it more exactly. Anyone having the necessary feeling of confidence might turn to someone who was experienced in these matters and ask what would be the best kind of thought to which he might devote himself in this way. This person would then suggest some thought which could be surveyed with ease but which would at the same time be as new to him as possible. If we use an old familiar thought, it is very easy for all kinds of memories and feelings and subjective impressions to arise out of the soul, so that only a dreamy condition would be induced. But if the enquirer is directed to a thought which is quite certainly a new one, which will arouse no memories, then he will be able to give himself up to it in such a way that the thought-forces of the soul will become stronger and stronger. In my own writings, and especially in my books—Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, I call this kind of thinking, which can be inwardly cultivated, Meditation. That is an old word: but to-day we will only use it in the particular connection which I will now describe. Meditation consists in turning the attention away from everything that has been either an inner or an external experience, and in thinking of nothing except that one thought, which must be placed in the very centre of the soul's life. By thus directing all the strength that the soul possesses upon this single thought something takes place with regard to the forces of the soul which can only be compared to the constant repetitions of some movement of the hand. What is it that takes place there? The muscles become stronger. It is exactly similar in the case of the soul's powers. When they are directed again and again to one thought they gain force and strength. And if this goes on for a long time—(though to spend a long time at it on each occasion is certainly not necessary, because it is rather a question of entering into a state of soul produced by concentration on a single thought)—and the length of time depends also on predisposition, for with one person it might take a week, and with another three years, and so on—so, if we go on for a long period doing such exercises again and again perhaps for five minutes or fifteen minutes every day, then we begin at last to have an inner sense that our being is becoming enfilled with a new content of force.

Previously, the forces of the nerves have been felt in the process of ordinary thinking and feeling as we feel the forces of the muscles active in the grasping of objects or in whatever we perform. Just as we have been feeling these things gradually more and more in growing up from childhood, so in the same way we gradually begin to learn how to feel that something new is permeating us when we apply ourselves to such thought-exercises—of which I can now only indicate the general principles. (You will find them described in greater detail in my books). Finally there comes a day when we are aware that we can no longer think about outer things in the same way as we used to think about them; but that now we have attained an entirely new soul-power; that we have something in us that is like an intensified, a stronger quality of thinking. And at last we feel that this kind of thinking enables us actually to take hold of what previously was only known to us in quite a shadowy way.

What we are then enabled to grasp is the essential reality of our own life. In what manner do we thus recognize our own earthly life—the life we have lived since birth? We know it through our memory, which reaches back as far as a certain point in our childhood. Rising out of undefined depths of the soul appears the remembrance of our past experiences. They are like shadows. Think how shadowy those emerging memory pictures of our life are in comparison with the intense, full-blooded experiences we have from day to day! If we now take hold of our thinking in the way that I have described, the shadowy quality of these memories ceases. We go back into our own actual earth-life; we experience again what we experienced ten or twenty years ago with the same inner forces and strength with which we originally experienced these events. Only the experience is not the same as formerly, inasmuch as we do not again come into direct contact with the external objects or beings, but we experience instead a kind of “extract” of it all. And that which we experience can, paradoxical as it may sound, be described as having definite significance. All at once, as in a mighty panorama, we have the whole of our life up to the time of birth before us. Not that we see the single events simply in a time-sequence, but we see them as a complete life-tableau. Time turns into Space. Our experiences are there before us, not as ordinary memories, but so that we know that we stand before the deeper being of our own humanity—like a second man within the man we know with our ordinary consciousness.

And then we arrive at the following: This physical human being that we confront in our ordinary consciousness is built up out of the matter which we take out of the Earth which is round about us. We continually discard this matter, and take in fresh matter, and we can definitely say that all the material substances which have been discarded by our body are replaced by new substances within periods of time of from seven to eight years. The material in us is something that is in constant flux. And so, learning to know our own life through our intensified thinking, we come to know that which remains—which endures throughout the whole of our earth-life. It is, at the same time, that which builds up our organism out of outer material substance; and this latter is itself at the same time that which we survey as the tableau of our life.

Now what we see in this manner is distinguished in yet another way from ordinary memory. In ordinary memory the events of our life appear before the soul as though approaching us from outside. We remember what such and such a person has done to us, or what has accrued to us from this or that event. But in the tableau which arises from our intensified thinking, we learn to know ourselves as we really are ourselves—what we have done to other human beings, how we have stood in relation to any occurrence. We learn to know ourselves. That is the important point. For in learning to know ourselves, we also learn to know ourselves intensively, and in such a way that we know how we are placed within the forces of our growth, yes, even within the forces of our nourishment; and how it is we ourselves who build up and again disintegrate our own bodies. Thus we learn to know our own inner being.

Now the important thing is that when we come to this self-knowledge, we immediately experience something which can never be experienced by means of any ordinary science or through the ordinary consciousness. I must admit that nowadays it is really very difficult to express what is now arrived at, because in face of what is considered authoritative to-day, it sounds so strange. But so it is. At this point we experience something through our intensified thinking, of which we must say the following:—There are the laws of Nature which we study assiduously in the sciences; we even learn about them in the elementary schools. We are proud of this; and prosaic humanity is justly proud of what has been learnt of these laws of Nature in physics, chemistry and so on. Here I must emphatically declare that Anthroposophy does not set itself in any amateurish opposition to Science. But because of our grasp of inner, intensive thinking we say that the natural laws which are learnt in connection with physics and chemistry are only present in the matter of the Earth, and they cease to be of any account so soon as we pass out into universal space.

Here I must state something which will not seem so very unplausible to anyone who thinks over it without prejudice: suppose we have somewhere a source of light, we know that the more widely the light is distributed from its source the more it loses in intensity; and the further we go out into space the weaker it becomes, so that we are tempted to speak of it no longer as ‘light’ but as ‘twilight,’ and finally when we have gone far enough it cannot be accounted as light any more. It is the same with the laws of Nature. They have a value for the region of the Earth, but the further we go out into the Cosmos they become less and less of value, until at length they cease to be of any account at all as laws of Nature. On the other hand, those laws which we come to apprehend through intensified thinking, which are already active in our own life, these show us that as human beings, we have not grown out of the natural laws of the Earth, but out of higher, cosmic laws. We have brought them with us in coming into earthly existence. And so we learn to recognize that the moment we have grasped our intensified thinking we can only apply natural law to the mineral kingdom. We cannot say—and this is a very reasonable error made by the newer physics—that natural laws can be applied to the Sun or the Stars. That cannot be done; for to wish to apply natural laws to the Universe would be just as artless as to wish to illumine the world of space with the light of a candle. Directly we ascend from the mineral, which as mineral is only apparent to us on this Earth, up to what is living, then we can no longer speak of the natural laws of the earthly realm, but we must speak of laws which worked down into the earthly realm from out of the Cosmos—from universal space. That is already the case with regard to the vegetable kingdom.

We can only use the laws of the Earth to explain the mineral-laws, for example, such as the law of gravity and so on, which work from the centre of the Earth towards the circumference. When we come to the vegetable kingdom, then we must say that the entire globe is the central point, and that the laws of life are working towards it from every side of the Cosmos—the same laws of life which we have first discovered in ourselves with our intensified thinking, and of which we have learnt to know that we build ourselves up between birth and death by their means.

To these laws, then, which work from the centre of the Earth outward, we add knowledge of the laws which work inwards towards the centre of the Earth from every direction, and which are already active in the vegetable kingdom. We look at the plants springing up out of the Earth and tell ourselves that they contain mineral matter. Chemistry to-day has gone very far in its knowledge of the respective activity of these mineral substances. That is all quite justifiable and quite right. And chemistry will go yet further. That will also be quite right. But if we want to explain the nature of plants we must explain their growth and that cannot be done through the forces that work upwards from the Earth, but only through those forces that work inwards from the surroundings, from the Cosmos, into the Earth-existence. Hence we have to admit that our knowledge must ascend from an earthly conception to a cosmic conception; and moreover in this cosmic conception is contained the real human Self-knowledge.

Now we can go further than this and transform our Feeling. To have ‘Feeling’ in ordinary life is a personal affair, not actually a source of knowledge. But we can transform that which is ordinarily only experienced subjectively as feeling, into a real objective source of knowledge.

In Meditation we concentrate upon one particular thought; we arrive at intensified or ‘substantial’ thinking and thereby are able to grasp something that works from the periphery of the Universe towards the centre of the Earth, in contradistinction to the ordinary laws of Nature, which work from the centre of the Earth outwards in all directions. So when we have reached this intensified thinking, and have perceived that our own life and also the life of the plants is spread out before our souls like a mighty panorama, then we go further. We come to a point, after having grasped something through this forceful thinking, when we can cast these strong thoughts aside. Anyone who knows how difficult it is, in ordinary life, to throw aside some thought which has taken hold of one, will understand that special exercises are necessary to enable this to be done. But it can be done. It is not only possible to cast out with the whole strength of our soul this thought that we have concentrated upon, but it is also possible to cast out the whole memory-tableau, and therewith our own life, and entirely to withdraw our attention from it.

Something then begins to occur by which we clearly see that we are descending further into the depths of the soul, into those regions which are usually only accessible to our feeling. As a rule in ordinary life, if all impressions received by sight or hearing are shut off, we fall asleep. But if we have developed intensified thinking, we do not fall asleep even when we have thrown aside every thought—even the substantially intense ones. A condition arises in which no sense-perceptions and no thoughts are active, a condition we can only describe by saying that such a person is simply ‘awake;’ he does not fall asleep; but he has nevertheless at first nothing in his consciousness. He is awake, with a consciousness that is empty. That is a condition revealed through Spiritual Science to which a person can attain who can be quite systematically and methodically developed—namely to have an empty consciousness in complete waking awareness.

In the usual way, if our consciousness is empty we are asleep. For from falling asleep to waking up we do have an empty consciousness—only—we are asleep in it. To have an empty consciousness and yet be awake, is the second stage of knowledge for which we strive. For this consciousness does not remain empty for long. It fills itself. As the ordinary consciousness can fill itself with colour through the perceptions of sight, or by the ear fill itself with sounds, so this empty consciousness fills itself with a spiritual world which is just as much in our surroundings ‘there’ as the ordinary physical world is in our surroundings here. The empty consciousness is the first to reveal the spiritual world—that spiritual world which is neither here on the Earth, nor in the Cosmos in Space, but which is outside Space and Time, and which nevertheless constitutes our deepest human nature. For if at first we have learnt to look back with the intense consciousness of thinking upon our whole earth-life as a script—now, with a consciousness that was empty and has become filled, we gaze into that world where we passed a life of soul-and-spirit before we came down into our earthly existence. We now learn to know ourselves as Beings who were spiritually present before birth and conception, who lived a pre-earthly existence before the one wherein we now are. We learn to recognize ourselves as beings of spirit-and-soul, and that the body that we bear we have received in that it was handed on to us by parents and grandparents. We have had it delivered to us in such a way that, as I have said, we can change it every seven years; but that which we are in our individual being has brought itself to Earth out of a pre-natal existence. But none of this is learnt by means of theorising, or by subtle cogitation; it can only be learnt when the suitable capacities are first of all unfolded in intellectual modesty.

Thus we have now learnt to know our inner humanity, our own individual being of spirit-and-soul. It comes to meet us when we descend into the region of feeling and not merely with feeling, but also with knowledge. But first we must mark how the struggle for knowledge is bound up with strong inner experiences which can be indicated as follows: If you have bound up one of your limbs tightly, so that you cannot move it—even if someone perhaps only bandages two of your fingers together—you feel discomfort, possibly even pain. Now when you are in a condition where you experience what is soul-and-spirit without a body, you do not possess the whole of your physical being, for you are living in an empty consciousness. The passing-over into this state is connected with a profound feeling of pain. Beyond the feeling of pain, beyond the privation, we wrestle for the entrance into that which is our deepest spiritual and soul-being. And here many people are arrested by terror. But it is impossible to gain any explanation of our real human nature by any other means; and if we can learn it in this way, then we can go still further.

But now we have to develop a strength of knowledge which in ordinary life is not recognised as such at all; we have to develop Love as a force of knowledge—a selfless out-going into the things and processes of the world. And if we perfect this Love ever more and more, so that we can actually lift ourselves out into the condition I have described, where we are body-free—and in this liberation from the body gaze at the world—then we learn to realise ourselves wholly as spiritual beings in the spiritual world. Then we know what man is as Spirit; but then we also know what dying is; for in Death man lays his physical body altogether aside. In this knowledge, which as a third form, is experienced through the deepening of Love, we learn to know ourselves outside our body; we accomplish separation from it by the constructive quality of knowledge.

From this moment we know what it will mean when we lay aside our body in this Earth-existence and go through the Gate of Death. We learn to know death. But we also learn to know the life of the soul-and-spirit on the other side of death. Now we know the spiritual-soul-being of man as it will be after death. As at first we had learnt to recognize our being as it is before the descent into earthly life, so now we know the continuation of the life of this being in the world of soul-and-spirit after death.

Then something else occurs which causes us to mark clearly how imperfect is the consciousness of to-day; for it speaks of ‘immortality,’ out of its hope and faith. But immortality—deathlessness—is only one half of Eternity—namely the everlasting continuation of the present point of time. We have to-day no word such as was to be found in the degrees of knowledge of an older time, which points to an immortality in the other half of Eternity—‘unborn-ness.’

Because just as man is deathless, so is he also unborn; that is to say, with birth he steps out of the spiritual world into physical existence, just as at death he passes from the physical world into a spiritual existence. Therefore in this manner we learn of the true being of man, which is spiritual, and which goes through birth and death; and only then are we in a position to comprehend our whole being.

The principles which I have briefly outlined have already formed the content of a wealth of literature, which has imbibed a conscientiousness and a responsibility towards its knowledge out of the realm of exact Science, on which alone this sense of responsibility can rest to-day. So we attain to a Spiritual Science, which has grown out of ordinary Science.

And just on account of this, we learn something else—namely how life consists of two tendencies or streams. People speak in a general way to-day about development; they say the child is small—it develops—it grows; it is full of energy—strong—it blossoms with life. They say that a lower form of life has evolved to a higher;—quickening, blooming life—growing ever more and more complicated! And that is right. But this stream of life is there, however, in opposition to another stream, which is present in every sentient living being—namely, a destructive tendency. Just as we have a budding and sprouting life in us, integrating life—so we have also the life of disintegration. Through knowledge such as this we perceive that we cannot merely say that our life streams up into the brain and nervous system and that this matter organises itself so that the nervous system can become the bearer of the life of the soul. No—it is not like that. The life is germinating and sprouting, but at the same time there is continual destruction incorporated into it.

Our life is incessantly going to pieces ... the blossoming life is always giving place to the decaying life. We are actually dying by degrees and at every moment something falls to ruin in us, and every time we build it up again. But, whereas matter is being destroyed, it leaves room wherein what is of the soul-and-spirit can enter and become active in us. And here we touch upon the great error made by materialism, for materialism believes that the sprouting and budding life evolves up to the nervous system in man so that the nerves are built up in the same way as the muscles are built up out of the blood. It is true they are. But no thinking is developed by means of building up the nerves; neither is feeling. On the contrary, in that the nerves decay to a certain extent, the psychic-spiritual incorporates itself into what is decaying. We must first disintegrate matter in order that the psychic-spiritual can appear in us and enable us to experience it for ourselves.

That will be the great moment in the development of a rightly-understood Natural Science, when the opposite to evolution will be recognized as carrying evolution forward at the corresponding point; when it will recognize not only integration, but also disintegration—thus admitting not only evolution but devolution. And thus it will be understood how the spiritual in the animal and in man—but in the latter in a self-conscious way—takes hold of the material. The spiritual does not take hold of the material because the latter is developing itself against it, but because matter, by a contrary process, is destroying itself; and the spiritual comes into evidence, the spiritual reveals itself, in this process. Therefore we are filled with the spirit; for it is everywhere present in devolution but not in evolution, which is Earth-development. Then we learn to observe that man as he stands before us in his entirety, is as though contained within a polar antithesis, Everywhere, in every single organ, wherever there is an upbuilding process there is also a destructive process going on. If we look at any one of the organs, it may be the liver, or the lungs, or the heart, we see that it is in a constant stream which consists of integration—disintegration, integration—disintegration. Is it not really rather an extraordinary expression that we use when we say for example ‘Here flows the Rhine?’ What is ‘the Rhine?’ When we say ‘Here flows the Rhine,’ we do not as a rule mean that there is the river bed ‘Rhine,’ but we mean the flowing water which we look at. Yet it is different every moment. The Rhine has been there a hundred years, a thousand years. But what is it which is there every moment? It is what is realised as being in alteration every moment in the flowing stream. In the same way, everything that we contain is held within a stream of change, in integration and disintegration, and in its disintegration it becomes the bearer of the spiritual. And so in every normal human being there exists a state of balance between anabolism and catabolism, and in this balance he develops the right capacity for the soul-and-spirit. Nevertheless, this balance can be disturbed, and can be disturbed to such an extent that some organ or other may have its correct degree of anabolism in relation to too slight a degree of catabolism, and then its growth becomes rampant. Or contrariwise, some organ may have a normal process of disintegration against too slight an anabolism, in which case the organ becomes disturbed, or atrophies; and thus we pass out of the physiological sphere into the pathological.

Only when we can discern what this condition of balance signifies, can we also discern how it may be disturbed by an excess of either integrating or disintegrating forces. But when we recognize this, then we can turn our gaze to the great outer world, and can find there what, under certain conditions, will act so as to equalise these two processes.

Suppose we take for example a human organ that is disturbed by reason of too strong a destructive process, and then look with sight made clear by spiritual-scientific knowledge at something outside in Nature, say at a plant; we shall know that in a particular plant there are anabolic—building-up—properties. Now it becomes apparent that in the habit of certain plants there are always anabolic properties and that these correspond precisely to the anabolic forces of human organs. Thus, we can discover—when we make use of these conceptions which have now been developed by me—that there are anabolic forces in the kidneys. Let us suppose the kidneys are too weak, that their destructive forces are excessive. We turn to the plants, and we find in the common horsetail, Equisetum arvense, anabolic forces which exactly correspond to those which belong to the kidneys. If we make a preparation from equisetum and administer it through the digestive process into the blood-circulation and thus conduct it in the right way to the region in the body where it can work, we strengthen the debilitated anabolic forces of the kidneys. And so we can proceed with all the organs. Once we have grasped this knowledge we have the possibility of bringing back into a condition of balance the unbalanced processes of integration and disintegration by using the forces which can be found in the outside world. If on the other hand we have to deal with forces of anabolism either in the kidneys or elsewhere which have become over-strong, then it will be necessary to reinforce the destructive processes. In this case we must have recourse to the lower type of plants, let us say the fern species, which have this property.

In this way we pass beyond the point of mere experiment and test in order to discover whether a preparation will be beneficial or not. We can look into the human organism in respect of the relative balance of the organs themselves; we can penetratingly survey Nature for the discovery of the anabolic and catabolic forces, and thus we make the Art of Healing into something wherein we can really see that a remedy is not administered just because statistics confirm that in such and such cases it is useful—but because by a really penetrating survey both of the human being and Nature we know with exactitude in every case the natural process in a Nature-product that can be transformed into a healing factor—that is, for the human organs in respect of the anabolic and catabolic forces.

I do not mean to say that in recent times Medicine has not made immense progress. Anthroposophy recognises this progress in Medicine to the full. Neither have we any wish to exclude what modern medical science has accomplished; on the contrary we honour it. But when we examine what has been brought out in the way of remedies in recent times we find that they have only been arrived at by way of lengthy experimentation. Anthroposophy supplies a penetrating knowledge which by its survey of human nature has fully proved itself in those spheres where Medicine has already been so happily successful. But in addition to this, Anthroposophy offers a whole series of new remedies also, a fact which is made possible by the same insight applied to both Nature and Man.

Therefore if we learn to look into the human being spiritually in this way—(and I will later show how the Art of Healing can be made fruitful in every single sphere through a true knowledge of the spirit)—we also learn to look into the spiritual life together with the material life, and then we arrive—and this no longer in the old dreamlike way which had its overflow in Mythology, but in an exact way—then we can arrive at a bringing together of perfectly rational knowledge with a ‘message’ of Healing.

Man learns to heal by means of a real and artistic conception of an art that has grown out of the world itself. Therewith we come again into touch with what existed in ancient times—though it was not then to be found in the way in which we to-day must aspire to find it now that we have the great wealth of Science behind us;—for what existed in ancient times through a kind of dreamlike knowledge, can lead us to-day to the application of forces and spiritual forces in connection with human health and sickness.

In ancient times there were the Mystery Centres in which a knowledge was cultivated which could solve humanity's religious problems and satisfy the longings of the soul; and in connection with the Mysteries there were places of Healing. To-day, quite rightly, we regard the things that were cultivated there as somewhat childish. But there was nevertheless a sound kernel in them;—it was known that the knowledge of the so-called normal world must go forward into knowledge of the abnormal world. Is it not strange that we, on the other hand, say that in his healthy state man comes forth out of Nature, and that then we have to explain the unhealthy man also by the laws of Nature? For every illness can be explained by these laws. Does Nature then contradict herself? We shall see that she does not do so with regard to disease. But our knowledge must be a continuation from the normal physical into the pathological. Knowledge can attain value for life only in so far as that side by side with those places where the normal aspects of life are cultivated, there must also be found those that are concerned with the illnesses of life.

There was to have been a centre of knowledge at the Goetheanum at Dornach in Switzerland, in the building which most unfortunately was burnt down, but which we hope will soon be rebuilt. It was to be a centre of knowledge where mankind would have been able to satisfy those longings of the soul which seek to penetrate into the sources of life. And out of what I might call a natural sequence it came to be regarded as a matter of course that there should be added to the Goetheanum a centre of Healing. True, this could only be, at first, of a modest kind. Such a thing must be there wherever there is to be a real knowledge of humanity. And we have it in the Clinical-Therapeutical Institute at Arlesheim which is the result of the efforts of Frau Dr. Wegman, and which has been followed by the founding of a similar Institute under Dr. Zeylmans van Emmichoven at The Hague. And so at Dornach there is established once again, side by side with the centre of Knowledge, a centre of Healing. And whereas courage must always be a part of everything that pertains to knowledge of the Spirit, so courage belongs above all things, to the way of Healing. This vital element lives in that Institute at Arlesheim—the courage to heal; in order that all which comes forth out of the whole human being as the possibility to control the forces of healing, may be used as a blessing for humanity. Therefore, such a centre of Knowledge, which once more strives towards the Mysteries—albeit in the modern sense—and where the great questions of existence are dealt with, must have beside it, even though it may be only in a modest way, a centre of Healing where knowledge of the smallest details of life is cultivated and where the effort is made to deepen the Art of Healing in a spiritual sense.

In the external nearness of Knowledge-Centre and Healing-Centre to one another we have the outer image of how close a connection should exist between Anthroposophical knowledge and the practical work of Healing, and that this should exist as such a spiritual Art that out of a conception of conditions of illness in the human being, there should grow a conception of Therapeutics, of Healing, so that the two may not fall asunder, but that the diagnostic process may be carried on into the healing process. The aim of Anthroposophy herein is that while one makes a diagnosis in the knowledge one has of what is happening in a person when he is ill, at the same moment one sees that such and such a thing is taking place, or something is happening in the anabolic processes. One then recognizes Nature for example in occurrences brought about by destructive forces; one knows where the destructive forces are to be found, and in administering these as a healing agent one is thus able to act so that these destructive forces can work against the upbuilding forces in the human being. And vice versa. So one is able to perceive clearly in what is going on in the human being, an unhealthy condition; but even in perceiving this unhealthy condition one immediately perceives also the nature of the working of the healing agent.

To-day I wished only to demonstrate the nature of a spiritual way of knowledge, and point out that the effect of this spiritual knowledge is such that man does not merely approach natural and spiritual forces in a theoretical way, but that he also learns to handle them, and out of his spiritual learning to mould life.

With advancing civilisation, life becomes continually more and more complicated. At the present time a longing is dominating the subconscious life of many souls—a longing to find what may be the source out of which this more and more complicated life has grown. Anthroposophy tries above all to assuage these longings. And we shall see that against much that is destructive in the life of to-day it honestly desires to co-operate in all that is constructive, that is advancing, that tends to prosperity in our civilisation—not with helpless phrases but actively, in all the practical questions of life. Anthroposophy wishes knowledge everywhere to flow into life, to give knowledge in a form which can help wherever help is needed in the affairs of life.

In the last lecture I tried to point out how by means of the kind of knowledge cultivated by Anthroposophy, man may be seen in his whole nature—consisting of body, soul and spirit. I tried to show also how an inner knowledge of the conditions of health and disease can only be arrived at when the entire nature of man can be perceived in this way; and how in learning to know the true connections between the things which take place within man and the external processes and conditions of substances in Nature, we also succeed in establishing a connecting link between pathology and therapy.

Our next task will be to explain in detail what was only given in general outline in the first lecture. And for this it will above all be necessary to observe how disintegration is proceeding in the human organism and how, on the other hand, there is a constant process of integration. Man has, to begin with, an external physical organisation which is perceptible by means of the outer senses, and whose manifestations can be comprehended by the reason. Besides this physical body there is also the first super-sensible body of the human being: the ether body, or life body. These two principles of the constitution of man serve to build up (integrate) the human organisation. The physical body is continually renewed as it casts off its substance. The ether body—which contains the forces of growth and of assimilation—is, in the entirety of its constitution, something of which we can gain a conception when we behold the growing and blossoming plant-kingdom in the spring; for the plants, as well as human beings, have an ether, or life body. In these two members of the human organisation we have a progressive, constructive evolution.

In so far as man is a sentient being, he bears within himself the next member, the astral body. (We need not feel that such terms are objectionable; we should perceive what they reveal to us). The astral body is essentially the mediator of sensation, the bearer of the inner life of feeling. The astral body contains not only the upbuilding forces but also the forces of destruction. Just as the ether body makes the being of man bud and sprout, as it were, so all these processes of budding are continually being disintegrated again by the astral body; and just because of this, just because the physical and etheric bodies are continually being disintegrated, there exists in the human organisation an activity of soul-and-spirit.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that the soul-and-spirit in man's nature inhere in the upbuilding process and that this process at last reaches a certain point—let us say in the nervous system—where it can become the bearer of soul-and-spirit. That is not the case. When eventually (and everything points to this being soon), our very admirable modern scientific research has made further progress, it will become apparent that an anabolic, a constructive process in the nervous system is not the essential thing; it is present in the nervous organisation merely in order that the nerves may, in fact, exist. But the nerve-process is in a continual, though slow state of dissolution; and because it is so, because the physical is always being dissolved, a place is set free for the spirit-and-soul.

In a still higher degree is this the case as regards the actual Ego-organisation, by means of which man is raised above all the other beings of Nature surrounding him on the Earth. The Ego-organisation is essentially bound up with katabolism; it is of greatest moment in those parts of the human being that are in a state of disintegration.

So when we look into this wonderful form of the human organism, we see that in every single organ there is construction, integration (whereby the organ ministers to growth and progressive development), and also destruction, whereby it ministers to retrogressive physical development, and by so doing gives foothold for the soul-and-spirit. I said in the last lecture that the state of balance between integration and disintegration which is present in a particular way in every human organ, can be disturbed. The upbuilding process can become rampant; in that case we have to do with an unhealthy condition. When we look in this way into the nature of the human being (to begin with I can only state these things rather abstractly; they will be expressed more concretely presently), when we proceed conscientiously, with a sense of scientific responsibility and do not talk in generalisations about the presence of integration and disintegration, but really study each individual organ as conscientiously as we have learnt to do in scientific observations to-day—then we shall be able to penetrate into this condition of balance that is necessary for the single organs and so find it possible to obtain a conception of the human being in health. If in either direction, either with respect to constructive or with respect to destructive processes, the balance of an organ is upset, then we have to do with something that is unhealthy in the human organism.

Now, however, we must discover how this human organism stands in relation to the three kingdoms of Nature in the outer world—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—from which we have of course to extract our remedies. When we have studied this inner state of balance in the manner described, we shall see how everything that is present in the three kingdoms of Nature outside man is, in every direction, being overcome within the human organism.

Let us take the simplest example:—the condition of warmth in man. Nothing of the outer conditions of warmth must be carried on unchanged when it is once within the human organism. When we investigate the manifestations of warmth outside in Nature, we know that warmth raises the temperature of things in the outer world. We say that warmth penetrates into things. If we, in our organisation, were to be penetrated in the same way by warmth we should be made ill by it. It is only when, through the forces and quality of our organisation we are able to receive this warmth-process which is being exercised upon us, into our organism and immediately transform it into an inner process, that our organisation is in a state of health. We are harmed by either heat or cold directly we are not in a position to receive it into our organisation and transform it.

In respect of warmth or cold, everyone can see this quite easily for himself. Moreover the same holds good for all other Nature processes. Only careful study, sharpened by spiritual perception, can lead to the recognition that every process taking place in Nature is transformed, metamorphosed, when it occurs within the human organism. We are indeed incessantly overcoming what lives in our earthly environment.

If we now consider the whole internal organisation of man we must say that if the inner force of the human being which inwardly transforms the external events and processes that are always working in upon him—for example, when he is taking nourishment—if this force were removed, then all that enters man from outside would work as a foreign process, and in a sense—if I were to express it crudely or trivially—man would be filled with foreign bodies or foreign processes. On the other hand, if the higher members of man's being, the astral body and the Ego-organisation develop excessive strength, then he does not only so transform the outer processes of his environment that enter into him as they should be transformed, but he does so more rampantly. Then there is a speeding-up of the processes which penetrate him. External Nature is driven out beyond the human—becomes in a certain sense, over-spiritualised; and we are faced with a disturbance of the health.

What has thus been indicated as an abstract principle is really present in every human organ and must be studied individually in the case of them all. Moreover the human being is related in a highly complicated manner, to all the different ways in which he transforms the external processes.

He who strives to get beyond the undisputed testimony of up-to-date anatomy and physiology, who tries to develop his understanding so that he can transform the conception of the human organism yielded by a study of the corpse or pathological conditions, observing them not merely in regard to their “dead” structures but according to their living nature, will find himself faced with endless enigmas of the human organism. For the more exact and the more living our knowledge becomes, the more complicated does it appear. There are, however, certain guiding lines which enable us to find our way through the labyrinth. And if I may be allowed to make a personal observation here, it is that the discovery of such guiding lines was a matter with which I occupied myself for thirty years before I began to speak about it openly—which was about the year 1917. As a comparatively young man, in the early twenties, I asked myself whether there was any possibility of research into this complicated human organisation. Were there certain fundamental principles which would enable one to arrive at a comprehensive understanding? And this led me—(I have just said that the study took me thirty years)—to the fact that one can regard the human organisation from three different aspects: the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system.

What we can call the organisation of nerves and senses predominates over all the others. It is, moreover, the bearer of all that can be described as the life of concepts. On the other hand, what we describe as the rhythmic organisation is, in a certain respect, self-contained. There is the rhythm of the breath, the rhythm of the circulation, the rhythm manifested in sleeping and waking, and countless other rhythmic processes. It was by making a practical and accurate distinction between the rhythmic organisation and the nerves-and-senses organisation that I first discovered how one could distinguish between the different constituent parts of the human being. I was compelled to ask myself the question—it is now nearly forty years ago, and to-day human hearts are more than ever burdened with baffling physiological problems—I was compelled to ask myself whether on this basis it is really possible to say that the whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is bound up with the system of nerves and senses. At the same time I felt that there was a contradiction: how can thinking, feeling and willing be bound up with the nerves and senses? Naturally I cannot go into all this detail to-day, I can only indicate it; but when we come to consider the domain of therapeutics much will be explained. For instance, direction: the nervous system and the metabolic system are polarically opposite. As the metabolic-limb-system builds up, so the system of nerves and senses destroys and vice versa. This and many other things demonstrate the polarity. Everything that constitutes the Ego-organisation is intimately bound up with the system of nerves and senses; everything that constitutes the ether body is intimately bound up with the metabolic and limb system; everything that constitutes the astral body is bound up with the rhythmic system; the physical body permeates the whole, but is continually overcome by the three other members of the human organisation. Only when we observe the human organism in this way can we learn to penetrate into the so-called normal or abnormal processes.

Let us take first the organisation of nerves and senses. But first, so that I may not be misunderstood, I would like to make a short digression. A very sceptical naturalist who had heard in quite a superficial way about these members which I posit as the basis of man's nature, said that I had attempted to distinguish between ‘head-organisation,’ ‘chest-organisation,’ and ‘abdominal organisation’; thus that I had in a sense located the system of nerves and senses only in the head, the rhythmic organisation in the chest, and the metabolic-limb system in the abdomen. But that is a very unjust statement. For without separating the systems spatially, the nerves and senses may be said to be organised principally in the head, but they are also to be found in the other two systems. The rhythmic system is principally located in the middle organisation; but it again is spread over the whole man; similarly the metabolic organisation. It is not a question of making a spatial separation between the organs, but of understanding their qualitative aspect and what is living in and permeating the single organs.

When we study the system of nerves and senses from this standpoint, we find that it spreads throughout the whole organism. The eye or the ear, for example, are organised in such a way that they pre-eminently contain the nerves and senses, in a lesser degree the rhythmic, and in a still less degree the metabolic system. An organ like the kidney, for instance, does not contain so much of the nerves-and-senses system as of the rhythmic or metabolic organisation, yet it contains something of all three. We do not understand the human being if we say: here are sense-organs, or there are digestive organs. In reality it is quite different. A sense-organ is only principally sense-organ; every sense-organ is also in a certain way a digestive and a rhythmic organ. The kidneys or the liver are to be understood as being principally assimilatory or excretory organs. In a lesser degree they are organs of nerves and senses. If, then, we study the whole organisation of man with its single organs from the point of view of the system of nerves-and-senses (in its reality, and not according to the fantastic concepts often formed by physiology), we find that man ‘perceives’ by means of his separate senses—sight, hearing and so on; but we also find that he is entirely permeated by the sense-organisation. The kidney, for instance, is a sense-organ which has a delicate perception of what is taking place in the digestive and excretory processes. The liver too, is—under certain conditions—a sense-organ. The heart is in a high degree an inner sense-organ and can only be understood if it is conceived of as such.

Do not imagine that I have any intention of criticising the science of to-day; I know its worth and my desire is that our view of these things shall be firmly grounded upon it. But we must nevertheless be clear that our science is, at present, not able to penetrate fully and with exactitude into the being of man. If it could, it would not relate the animal organisation so closely to the human in the way it does in our time. In respect of the life of sense, the animal stands at a lower level than the human organisation. The human nerves-and-senses organisation is yoked to the Ego-organisation; in the animal it is yoked to the astral body. The sense-life of man is entirely different from that of the animal. When the animal perceives something with its eyes—and this can be shown by a closer study of the structure of the eye—something takes place in the animal which, so to say, goes through the whole of its body. It does not happen like that in man. In man, sense-perception remains far more at the periphery, is concentrated far more on the surface. You can understand from this that there are delicate organisations present in animals which, in the case of the higher species, are only to be found in etheric form. But in certain of the lower animals you find, for instance, the xiphoid process which is also present in higher animals but in their case it is etheric; or you may find the pecten or choroid process in the eye. The way in which these organs are permeated by the blood, shows that the eye shares in the whole organisation of the animal and is the mediator to it of a life in the circumference of its environment. Man, on the other hand, is connected with his system of nerves-and-senses quite differently and therefore lives, in a far higher sense than the animal, in his outer world, whereas the animal lives more within itself. But everything which is communicated through the higher spiritual members of the human being, which lives itself out through the Ego-organisation by way of the nerves and senses, requires—just because it is present within the domain of the physical body—to receive its material influences from out of the physical world.

Now if we closely study the system of nerves-and-senses at a time when it is functioning perfectly healthily, we find that its working depends on a certain substance, and on the processes that take place in that substance. Matter is something which is never at rest; it merely represents what is, actually, a ‘process.’ (A crystal of quartz, for instance, is only a self-contained, definitely shaped thing to us because we never perceive that it is a ‘process,’ though indeed it is one which is taking place extremely slowly.) We must penetrate further and further into the human organism and learn to understand its transformative activity. That which enters into the organism as external physical substance has to be taken up by it and overcome, in the way described in the introductory lecture.

Now it is especially interesting that when the system of nerves-and-senses is in a normal, i.e., a healthy state (which must of course be understood relatively), it is dependent upon a delicate process which takes place under the influence of the silicic acid which enters the organism. Silicic acid, which in the outer realm of Nature forms itself into beautiful quartz-crystals, has this peculiarity:

when it penetrates into the human organism it is taken up by the processes of the nerves and senses; so that if we look at the system of nerves-and-senses with spiritual sight, we see a wonderfully delicate process going on in which silicic acid is active. But if we look at the other side of the question—as when I said that man has senses everywhere—then we shall notice that it is only in the periphery, that is, where the senses are especially concentrated, that the silicic acid process is intensified; when we turn to the more inner parts of the organism, to the lungs, liver or kidneys, it is far less strong, it is ‘thinner;’ while in the bones it is again stronger. In this way we discover that man has a remarkable constitution.

We have, so to say, a periphery and a circumference where the senses are concentrated; then we have that which fills out the limbs and which carries the skeleton; between these we have the muscles, the glands and so on.

In that which I have described as the ‘circumference’ and the ‘centralised,’ we have the strongest silicic acid processes; we can follow them into the organs that lie between these two, and there we find that they have their own specific silicic acid processes but weaker than those in the circumference. Thus in respect of the outer parts, where man extends in an outgoing direction from the nerves into the senses, he needs more and more silicic acid; in the centre of his system he requires comparatively little; but where his skeleton lies, at the basis of the motor system, there again he requires more silicic acid. Directly we perceive this fact we recognize the inexactitude of many assertions of modern physiology. (And again let me emphasise that I do not wish to criticise them, but merely to make certain statements.) For instance, if we study the life of the human being according to modern physiology, we are directed to the breathing-process. In certain respects this is a complex process, but—speaking generally—it consists in taking in oxygen out of the air, and breathing out carbonic acid. That is the rhythmical process which is essentially the basis of organic life. We say that oxygen is breathed in, that it goes through certain processes described by physiology, within the organism; that it combines with carbon in the blood, and is then ejected on the breath as carbonic acid. This is perfectly correct according to a purely external method of observation. This process is, however, connected with another. We do not merely breathe in oxygen and combine it with carbon. Primarily, that is done with that portion of the oxygen which is spread over the lower part of the body; that is what we unite with the carbon and breathe out as carbonic acid.

There is another and a more delicate process behind this rhythmical occurrence. That portion of the oxygen which, in the human organisation, rises towards the head and therefore (in the particular sense which was mentioned previously) to the system of nerves-and-senses, unites itself with the substance we call silica, and forms silicic acid. And whereas in man the important thing for the metabolic system is the production of carbonic acid, so the important thing for the nerves-and-senses system is the production of silicic acid. The latter is a finer process which we are not able to verify with the coarse instruments at our disposal, though all the means are there by which it can be verified. Thus we have the coarser process on the one hand, and on the other the finer process where the oxygen combines with the silica to form silicic acid, and as such, is secreted inwardly in the human organisation.

Through this secretion of silicic acid the whole organism becomes a sense-organ—more so in the periphery, less so in the separate organs.

If we look at it this way, we can perceive the more delicate intimate structure of the human organism, and see how every organ contains, of necessity, processes related to substances each in its own distinct degree.

If we are now to grasp what health and illness really are, we must understand how these processes take place in any one organ. Suppose we take the kidney, for sake of example. Through some particular condition or other—some symptomatic complication, let us say—our diagnosis leads us to assume that the cause of an illness lies in the kidneys. If we call Spiritual Science to the aid of our diagnosis, we find that the kidney is acting too little as a sense-organ for the surrounding digestive and excretory processes; it is acting too strongly as an organ of metabolism; hence the balance is upset.

In such a case we have above all to ask: how are we to restore to it in a greater degree the character of sense-organ? We can say that because the kidney proves to be an insufficient sense-organ for the digestive and excretory processes, then we must see that it receives the necessary supply of silicic acid.

Now in the anthroposophical sense, there are three ways of administering substances that are required by a healthy human organism. The first is to give the patient a remedy by mouth. But in that case we must be guided by whether the whole digestive organism is so constituted that it can transmit the substances exactly to that spot where they are to be effective. We must know how a substance works—whether on the heart, or the lungs, and so forth, when we administer it by mouth and it passes into the digestive tract. The second way is by injections. By this means we introduce a substance directly into the rhythmic system. There, it works more as a ‘process;’ there, that which in the metabolism is a substantial organisation, is transformed at once into a rhythmic activity and we directly affect the rhythmic system. Or again, we try the third way: we prepare a substance as an ointment to be applied at the right place, or administer it in a bath; in short we apply our remedy in an external form. There are, of course, a great many different methods of doing this.

We have these three ways of applying remedies. But now let us observe the kidneys which our diagnosis reveals as having a diminished capacity as a sense-organ. We have to administer the right kind of silicic acid process. Therefore we have to be attentive, because, in the breathing process as described just now, where the oxygen combines with silica and then disperses silicic acid throughout the body, and because during that process too little silicic acid has reached the kidneys, we must do something which will attract a stronger silicic acid process to them. So we must know how to come to the assistance of the organism which has failed to do this for itself; and for this we must discover what there is externally which is the result of a process such as is wanting in the kidneys. We must search for it. How can we find ways and means to introduce just this silicic acid process into the kidneys?

And now we find that the function of the kidneys, especially as it is a sense-function, is dependent upon the astral body. The astral body is at the basis of the excretory processes and of this particular form of them. Therefore we must stimulate the astral body and moreover in such a way that it will somehow carry the silicic acid process which is administered from outside, to an organ such as the kidney. We need a remedy that, firstly, will stimulate the silicic-acid process, and, secondly, which will stimulate it precisely in the kidneys. If we seek for it in the surrounding plant world, we come upon the plant Equisetum arvense, the ordinary field ‘horsetail.’ The peculiar feature of this plant is that it contains a great deal of silicic acid. If we were to give silicic acid alone it would, however, not reach the kidneys. Equisetum also contains sulphurous acid salts. Sulphurous acid salts alone work on the rhythmic system, on the excretory organs and on the kidneys in particular. When they are intimately combined as they are in Equisetum arvense (we can administer it by mouth, or if that is not suitable, in either of the other ways)—then the sulphurous acid salts enable the silicic acid to find its way to the kidneys.

Here we have touched upon a single instance—a pathological condition of the kidneys. We have approached it quite methodically; we have discerned what can supply what is lacking in the kidneys; and we have erected a bridge that can be followed step by step, from pathology to therapy.

Now let us take another case. Suppose we have to do with some disturbance of the digestive system—such as we usually include under the word ‘dyspepsia.’ If we again proceed according to Spiritual Science, we shall discover that here we have to do principally with a faulty and inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Why is the Ego-organisation not acting strongly enough? That is the question. And we must search somewhere in the functional regions of the human organism for what it is that is causing this weakness of the Ego-organisation. In certain cases we find that the fault lies in the gall-bladder secretions. If that is so, then we must come to the assistance of the Ego-organisation (just as we came to the assistance of the kidneys with the equisetum) by administering something which, if it reaches the required spot by being prepared in a certain way, will there strengthen the inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Thus, even as we find that the silicic acid process (which lies at the root of the nerves-and-senses system) when introduced in the right way to the kidneys enhances their sense-faculty, so we now find that such a process as the gall-bladder secretions (which corresponds primarily with the Ego-organisation) is really connected in quite a special manner (also in relation to other things) with the action of carbon. Now a remarkable thing to be observed is that if we wish to introduce carbon into the organism in the correct way for treating dyspepsia, we find that carbon—(though it is contained in every plant)—is contained in Cichorium intybus (chicory) in a form that directly affects the gall-bladder. When we know how to make the correct preparation from Cichorium intybus, we can lead it over into the functions of this organ as a certain form of carbon-process, in the same way as is done with regard to the silicic-acid process and the kidneys.

With these simple examples—which are applicable either to slight or in certain circumstances to very severe cases of illness—I have tried to indicate how, by a spiritual-scientific observation of the human organism on the one hand, and on the other of the different natural creations and their respective interchanges with each other, there can be brought about, firstly, an understanding of the processes of illness, and secondly an understanding of what is required in order to reverse the direction of those processes. Healing becomes thereby a penetrating Art. This is what can be achieved for the art of Medicine, the art of Healing, by the kind of scientific research that is called Anthroposophy. There is nothing of the nature of fantasy about it. It is that which will bring research to the point of extreme exactitude with regard to the observation of the whole human being, both physically, psychically and spiritually. The condition of illness in man depends upon the respective activity of the physical, the psychic and the spiritual. And because man's constitution consists of nerves-and-senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic-and-limb system, we are enabled also to penetrate into the different processes and their degrees of activity. We learn to know how a sense-function is present in the kidneys as soon as we direct our attention to the essential nature of sense-functions; otherwise, we only seek to discover sense-functions under their cruder aspect as they appear in the senses themselves. Now however, we become able to comprehend illness as such.

I have already said that in the metabolic-and-limb system, processes take place which are the opposite of those that take place in the system of nerves-and-senses. But it can happen that processes which primarily are also nerves and senses processes, and are, for instance, proper to the nerves of the head where they are ‘normal’—It can happen that these processes can in a certain sense become dislodged by the metabolic-and-limb system; that through an abnormality of the astral body and Ego-organisation in the metabolic-limb-system something can happen which would be ‘correct’ or ‘normal’ only if taking place in the system of nerves-and-senses. That is to say, what is right for one system can be in another system productive of metamorphosis or disease. So that a process which properly belongs, for instance, to the system of nerves-and-senses makes its appearance in another system, and is then a process of disease. An example of this is found in typhoid fever. Typhoid represents a process which belongs properly to the nervous system. While it should play its part there in the physical organisation, it plays its part as a matter of fact in the region of the metabolic system within the etheric organisation—within the ether body—works over into the physical body and appears there as typhoid. Here we see into the nature of the onset of illness. Or it can also happen that the dynamic force, or those forces which are active in a sense-organ (and must be active there in a certain degree in order that a sense-organ as such may arise)—become active somewhere where they should not. That which works in a sense-organ can be in some way or another transformed in its activity elsewhere. Let us take the activity of the ear. Instead of remaining in the system of nerves-and-senses, it obtrudes itself (and this under circumstances which can also be described) in another place—for example in the metabolic system where this is connected with the rhythmic system. Then there arises, in the wrong place, an abnormal tendency to produce a sense-organ; and this manifests itself as carcinoma—as a cancerous growth. It is only when we can look in this way into the human organism that we can perceive that carcinoma represents a certain tendency, displaced in respect of the systems, to the formation of a sense organ.

When we speak of the fertilisation of Medicine through Anthroposophy, it is a question of learning how abnormal conditions in the human organism arise from the fact that what is normal to one system transplants itself into another. And only by perceiving the matter thus is one in a position really to understand the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, and so to make the bridge from pathology to therapy, from observation of the patient to healing the patient.

When these things are represented as a connected whole, it will be seen how nothing that is said from this standpoint can in any way contradict modern medicine. As a first step in this direction I hope that very soon now the book [‘Fundamentals of Therapy,’ by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman.] will be published that has been written by me in collaboration with Dr. Wegman, the Director of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim. This book will present what can be given from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, not as a contradiction of modern medicine but as an extension of it. People will then be able to convince themselves that it has nothing to do with the kind of superficiality which is so prevalent to-day. This book will show, in a way that will be justified by modern science, the fruitfulness that can enter into the art of Healing by means of spiritual scientific investigation. Precisely when these things can be followed up more and more in detail and with scientific conscientiousness, will those efforts be acknowledged which are being made by such an Institution as the International Laboratories of Arlesheim, [Now “Weleda,” A. G., Arlesheim.] where a whole range of new remedies is being prepared in accordance with the principles here set forth.

In the third lecture it will be my endeavour to consolidate still further (in so far as that can be done here in a popular manner), what has already been indicated as a rational therapy, by citing certain special cases of illness and the way in which they can be cured. Anyone who can really perceive what is meant will certainly not have any fear that the things stated cannot be subjected to serious test. We know that it will be the same in this as in all other domains of Anthroposophy; to begin with, there will be rebuffs, abuse and criticism by those who do not know it in detail. But those who do learn to know it in detail will stop their abuse. Therefore, in my third lecture I will go more into the particulars which will show that we are not evading modern science but are in full agreement with it, and that we proceed from the desire to enlarge the boundaries of Science by spiritual knowledge in the sphere of anthroposophical medicine.

Only when this is understood will the art of Healing stand upon its true foundations. For the art of Healing concerns man. Man is a being of body, soul and spirit. A real medicine can therefore only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces man in respect of all three—in respect of body, soul and spirit.

In the first two lectures I dealt with the general principles by means of which the knowledge of healing can be made fruitful through anthroposophical research, and to-day I would like to enlarge upon this by giving certain details—such details as will at the same time show that in so far as Anthroposophy works into practical life, it will lead also to a ‘handling,’ if I may use the expression, of life as a whole which will be in accordance with reality.

In the previous lectures I spoke of the way in which Anthroposophy must necessarily regard the constitution of the physical body which we know by means of our senses, but the substance of which is continually being thrown off and newly constructed during the course of life. Within this physical body lives the so-called ether, or life body, which contains the forces of growth and of nourishment and which man possesses in common with the plants. We must also recognise that man is the bearer of sentient life—that life which inwardly reflects the outer world. This is the astral body. (As I said before, we need not take exception to the terminology but simply accept it in the sense in which it is here explained.) Man has this astral body in common with the animal kingdom, but he excels all other kingdoms of Nature in the surrounding world inasmuch as he possesses the Ego-organisation.

If we merely speak of these constituent parts of the human being in a general way, we shall never come to the point of being able to estimate them at their true value. If, however, we perceive the real significance of these four members of our being, then we have no longer a mere philosophically conceived classification, or a mere division of phenomena before us, and we realise that such a conception really adds something to our comprehension of the being of man. We need only consider a daily event of human life—the interchange of waking and sleeping—and we shall at once understand the significance of this threefold constitution.

Every day we observe the human being passing from that condition wherein he has an inner impulse to move his limbs and when he takes in the impressions of the outer world so that he may work them over within himself, into that other condition where he lies motionless in sleep and his consciousness (if it does not rise to the point of dream) sinks down into an inner, indefinite darkness. If we refuse to admit that the functions of willing, feeling and thinking are annihilated in sleep and simply appear again when he wakes, we must ask ourselves: What is the relation of waking man to sleeping man?

During sleep, the astral body and Ego-organisation have separated from the physical body and the ether body. As soon as we have realised that the astral body and Ego-organisation—the soul-and-spirit—separate from man's physical organisation during sleep, we come to something else, namely, that this radical extraction during sleep can also occur in a lesser degree—partially—during the waking state. Certain conditions call forth a certain tendency to sleep but do not bring about total sleep—I mean conditions of faintness, unconsciousness and the like. These are conditions in which the human being commences to sleep but does not achieve it completely; he hovers as it were, between sleeping and waking.

In order to understand such conditions, we must be able to look into the nature of the human being. We must remind ourselves of what was said in the last lecture when the results of anthroposophical research were explained. I said that it is possible to divide the whole organisation of man into three systems: (1) the nerves-and-senses; (2) the rhythmic system (which includes all rhythmical processes); (3) metabolic-limb system. I also said that the metabolic-limb system is the polar antithesis of the system of nerves-and-senses, while the rhythmic system is the mediator between the two: Each of these three systems is permeated by the four members of man's being—physical body, ether body, astral body and Ego-organisation. Now the constitution of man is very complicated. It cannot be said that in sleep the astral body and Ego-organisation pass entirely out of the physical and etheric bodies. It can so happen that the organism of nerves-and-senses is only partially forsaken by the higher principles. Then, because the system of nerves-and-senses has its main seat in the head, the head is constrained to develop something which gives an inclination towards sleep. Yet the man is not really asleep, for his metabolic-limb system and his rhythmic system still contain the astral body and Ego-organisation. These have only left the head. Hence there arises a state of dullness, or faintness, while the rest of the organism functions as in waking life. What I have here described does not necessarily arise from within; it can occur when something is applied from without—for instance if a certain quantity of lead is administered or lead combined with some other substance. Comatose states or vertigo, which are caused by the separation of the astral body and Ego-organisation from the head, can be brought about by the administration of certain quantities of lead. We see, therefore, that this substance, this lead, when it is taken inwardly, drives the astral body and Ego out of the head. Here we look deeply into the human organisation in its relation to the surrounding world; we see in this way that it can become dependent upon what is taken in by way of substance.

But now let us suppose that a person exhibits the opposite condition—that his astral body and Ego cling too firmly to his head, work too strongly upon it. This becomes clear to us when we examine how the head-organisation works upon the whole man, when we study how the organism builds itself up. We see all the hard parts forming themselves—the bony structures; we see the other softer parts, the muscles and so on. If we study man's whole development from childhood onwards, we find that that part of the organism which shows us, first by its outer shape how it inclines towards ossification, and has its essential nature in its bony consistency—namely the head—we find that the head throws out, during the course of its development, precisely those forces which work formatively in respect of the whole skeleton and which therefore tend to harden and stiffen the human being. We gradually come to know what tasks the Ego-organisation and astral body perform when they permeate the head; they work in such a way that the forces which harden man inwardly, which cause the hard parts of his being to separate from the more fluid organisation, stream out from his head. Now if the astral body and the Ego-organisation work too strongly in the head, the hardening forces stream out too vigorously and the result is what we see in the ageing organisation, when a tendency to bone-formation is present. This tendency manifests as arteriosclerosis, where chalky deposits are present in the arteries. In sclerosis the stiffening, hardening principle, which otherwise works into the bones works into the whole organism. We have therefore an excessively strong working of the Ego-organisation and the astral body; they impress themselves too deeply into the organism.

At this point the conception of the astral body begins to be a very real factor. For, if we administer lead to the organism in its normal condition, we drive the astral body and Ego out of the head. But if these principles are too closely bound to the head and we give a proper dose of lead, we are acting rightly because then we loosen the astral forces and the Ego to some extent from the head and thus we can combat sclerosis.

Here we see how external influences can work upon this connection of the different members of man's being. If we administer lead to the healthy organism, we can bring it to the point of illness; comatose conditions or faintness are caused because the astral body and the Ego are separated from it, giving rise to a condition which in the ordinary course of events is only there in sleep. If, however, the astral body and the Ego are too closely united with the head, the human being is over-wakeful and the effect of this continued over-wakefulness is an inward hardening. The ultimate consequence will be sclerosis and in this case the right thing to do is to drive the astral body and the Ego slightly out of the head. Thus we begin to understand the inner working of the remedy directly we take the different members of man's being into account.

Now let us turn to the metabolic-limb system. When we are sound asleep, our astral body and Ego have separated from this system. But we can drive them out of this system without driving them out of the head; just as we drive them out of the head by means of lead and cause comatose conditions, etc., so by giving a certain dosage of silver or some combination of silver, we can drive the astral body and Ego out of the metabolic-limb system. We then get corresponding manifestations in the digestion—solidifying of the excreta and other disturbances of the digestive tract.

But suppose the astral body and Ego are working too actively in the digestive organs. Now the astral body and Ego stimulate the digestive functions precisely in the metabolic-limb system. If they work too strongly, penetrate too deeply, then there is excessive digestive activity. There is a tendency to diarrhoea and other kindred symptoms which are the result of too rapid and superficial digestion.

Now this is connected with something else, namely that in this condition the metabolic-limb system comes too much to the fore. In the human organism everything works together. If the metabolic-limb system predominates, it also works too strongly—works moreover not only on the rhythmic organisation but also on the head-organisation, principally, however, on the former; for the digestive organisation continues on into the rhythmic system. The products of digestion are transformed in the blood. The rhythm of the blood is dependent upon what enters it by way of material substances. If, then, there is excessive activity on the part of the astral body and Ego, symptoms of fever and a rise of temperature will occur. Now if we know that the astral body and the Ego-organisation are driven out of the metabolic-limb system by the administration of a certain dosage of silver, we know further that if the astral organism and the Ego-organisation are too deeply embedded in the metabolic-limb system, we can raise them out of the latter by giving a remedy consisting of silver or silver combined with some other substance.

This shows us how we can master these connections within the being of man. Spiritual Science therefore makes researches into the whole of Nature. In the last lecture I attempted to show, in principle, how this can be done in respect of the plants. To-day I have explained how it can be done in respect of two mineral substances, lead and silver. We gain an insight into the relation between the human organism and its surroundings by directing our attention to the manner in which these different substances in the outer world affect the different members of the constitution of man.

We will now take an example which shows that it is possible, out of an inner insight into the nature of the activity of the human organisation, to pass from the realm of pathology to an understanding of therapy.

We have a certain remedy continually present within us. The being of man requires healing all the time. The natural inclination is always for the Ego-organisation and the astral body to press too strongly into the physical body and the etheric body. Man would prefer to look out into the world, not clearly, but always more or less dully; he would prefer to be always at rest. As a matter of fact, he suffers from a constant illness: the ‘desire to rest.’ He must be cured of this, for he is only well if his organism is constantly being cured. For the purpose of this cure, he has iron in the blood.

Iron is a metal which works on the organism in such a way that the astral body and Ego are prevented from being too strongly bound to the physical and etheric bodies. There is really a continual healing going on within man, an ‘iron-cure.’ The moment the human organism contains too little iron, there is a longing for rest, a feeling of slackness. Directly there is too much iron, an involuntary over-activity and restlessness sets in. Iron regulates the connection between physical body and ether body on the one hand, and the astral body and Ego-organisation on the other. Therefore if there is any disturbance of this connection it may be said that an increase or a decrease of the iron-content in the organism will restore the right relation.

Now let us observe a certain kind of illness that is not of particular importance in medicine. We can quite well understand why not. It is, to begin with, apparently so intricate that its cause is not easy to discover. And so every possible kind of remedy is given for this illness, to which, as I have said, medicine gives little heed although it is very unpleasant for the sufferer—I mean migraine.

In the head-organisation we observe, first of all, the continuations of the sense-nerves which are most wonderfully intertwined and interwoven. The nerves, as they continue on into the centre of the brain from the senses, form a marvellous structure. It represents the highest point of perfection in respect of the physical organisation, for there the Ego of man impresses the most intense form of its activity upon the physical body. The way in which the nerves pass inwards from the senses and are linked together, bringing about something like an inner articulation within the organism, places the human organism at a much higher level than the animal. And it is possible, just because the Ego-organisation must take hold at this point in order to control this marvellous structure, that it may occasionally fail and then that part of the physical organisation gets left to itself. It may happen that the Ego-organisation is not powerful enough to permeate this so-called ‘white matter’ of the brain or to organise it thoroughly.

Now the white matter of the brain is surrounded by the grey matter—a substance which is far less delicately organised but which is indeed regarded by ordinary physiology as being the more important of the two. This it is not, for the reason that it is connected much more with nutrition. We have a far more mobile activity in respect of nutrition—of inner accumulation of substance—in the grey brain-matter, than in the white matter which lies in the middle and which in a much greater degree is a foundation for the Spiritual.

Now everything in the human organism belongs together, for every member works upon every other. Directly, therefore, that the Ego begins to withdraw to some extent from the central—the white brain-substance—the grey matter becomes disordered. The astral body and the ether body can no longer take proper hold of the grey matter; and so the whole of the interior of the head gets out of order. The Ego-organisation withdraws from the central brain, the astral organisation withdraws more from the periphery of the brain; and the whole organisation of the head is dislocated. The central brain begins to be less serviceable for the forming of concepts, more akin to the grey matter, developing a kind of digestive process which it ought not to do; the grey matter begins to unfold an excessively strong digestive process. And then foreign bodies are absorbed; a strong excretory process permeates the brain. All this reacts upon the finer breathing processes, principally, however, upon the rhythmic processes of the blood-circulation. Thus we get, not perhaps a very deeply penetrating, but still a very significant disorder arising in the human organism and the question is:

How are we to restore the Ego-organisation to the system of nerves-and-senses? How are we to drive the Ego back again to the place it has left—into the central part of the brain?

This we can do if we administer a substance of which I spoke in the earlier lectures, namely, silicic acid. If, however, we were to give only silicic acid, we should, it is true, send back the Ego into the central nerves-and-senses system in the head, but we should leave the surrounding part, i.e., the grey matter of the brain, untouched. Thus we must at the same time so regulate the digestive process of the grey matter that it no longer ‘overflows,’ that it incorporates itself rhythmically into the whole organisation of the human being. Therefore we must simultaneously administer iron—which is there in order to regulate these connections—so that the rhythmic organisation shall be placed once more in its right relation to the system lying at the basis of spiritual activity.

At the same time, however, there will be irregularities in the ‘digestive’ processes in the larger brain. In the organism, nothing takes place in one system of organs without influencing others. Therefore in this case, slight and delicate disorders will arise in the digestive system as a whole. Once more, if we study the connections between outer substances and the human organism, we find that sulphur and combinations of sulphur work in such a way that starting from the digestive system they bring about a regularising of the whole process of digestion.

We have now three standpoints from which migraine can be considered: (1) regulation of the digestion, the disorder of which is evident in the irregular digestive process of the brain; (2) regulation of the nervous and sensory activity of the Ego by means of silicic acid; (3) regulation of the disordered rhythm of the circulatory system by the administration of iron. In this way we are able to survey the whole process. As I have said, migraine is an ailment somewhat despised by ordinary medicine but it is by no means so complicated as it appears when we really penetrate into the nature of the human organism. Indeed we discover that the organism itself calls upon us to administer a preparation of silicic acid, sulphur and iron—combined in a certain way. We then obtain a remedy for migraine (Biodoron) which, however, also has the effect of regulating the influence of the Ego-organisation, causing it to take hold of the organism and to work upon everything of the nature of disturbed rhythm in the blood-circulation and also upon all that is taking place as the out-streaming digestive process in the organism.

Migraine is only a symptom of the fact that the ether body, astral body and Ego are not working properly in the physical body. Therefore our remedy for migraine is peculiarly adapted to restore the co-operation of these three higher principles with the physical. When these members are not working properly together, our remedy—which is not a mere ‘cure for headache’—can help a patient under all circumstances. It is a remedy for migraine just because it attacks the most radical symptoms; and it is especially by speaking of this remedy that I can make clear to you the anthroposophical principles of therapy, the essential nature of illness and how to prepare a medicament.

Before such remedies can be prepared we must understand the relationship that exists between the human organism and the surrounding world. But for this it is necessary to approach the study of the nature of this relationship in all seriousness. In the last lecture, in indicating how we arrive at plant-remedies, I mentioned Equisetum arvense as an example. We can say of every plant that it works in such and such a way on this or that organ. But as we study these things we must be quite clear that a plant—growing here or there in Nature—is not at all the same in Spring as it is in Autumn. In Spring we have a sprouting and growing plant before us—a plant that contains the physical and ethereal forces just as man contains them. If, then, we administer a substance from this plant to the organism we shall be able to produce an especially strong effect upon the physical body and ether body. If, however, we leave the plant growing all through the Summer and pluck it when Autumn is drawing near, then we have a plant which is on the point of drying up and shriveling.

Now let us look again at the human organism. Throughout the development of the physical body there is a budding and sprouting caused by the working of the ether body. The astral body and the Ego-organisation cause disintegration. All the time in the physical body there is a budding and sprouting life, caused by the ether body. If this process alone were to take place in the human being, he would never be able to unfold self-consciousness; for the more the growth-forces are stimulated, the more this budding and sprouting takes place, the more we lack self-possession. When the astral organism and Ego-organisation separate from the other two members in sleep, we are unconscious. The forces which build man up, which cause growth and give rise to the process of nutrition do not bring him to the point where he can feel and think. On the contrary, to be able to feel and think something in the organism must be destroyed. This is the work of the astral body and the Ego-organisation. They bring about a continual Autumn in man. The physical organisation and ether body bring about a continual Spring—a budding and sprouting life—but no self-consciousness, nothing of the nature of soul and spirit. The astral body and the Ego-organisation destroy; they cause the physical body to dry up and harden. But this has to be. The physical body has continually to oscillate between integration and disintegration. Outside in Nature we find the forces alternating between Spring and Autumn. In man too, there is rhythm; while he is asleep, it is wholly Spring for him—the physical and etheric bodies bud and blossom; when he is awake the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are thrust back, hemmed in, and conscious self-possession sets in—Autumn and Winter are there.

By this we can see how superficial it is to base our judgments merely on outer analogies. External observation might well result in describing the waking life of man as ‘Spring’ and ‘Summer’ and in speaking of sleep as analogous to Winter. But in reality this is not correct. When we fall asleep, the astral body and the Ego pass out and the physical-etheric part of our being begins to bud and blossom; the forces of the ether body are very active. It is a condition of Spring and Summer. If we could look back upon our physical and etheric bodies and observe what is going on when the astral body and Ego have forsaken them, we should be able to describe this budding and sprouting, and the moment of waking would seem to be like the approach of Autumn. But this, of course, requires the faculty of spiritual perception. It cannot be seen with physical eyes.

Now let us imagine that we are looking for plant-remedies. Gentians gathered in the Spring will have a healing influence on certain forms of dyspepsia. If we gather the plant in the Spring and then prepare it as a medicament, we shall be able to work upon disturbed forces of nutrition.

The roots of the gentian should be boiled and given in order to regulate the forces of nutrition. But if we give gentian roots that have been dug up in the Autumn when the plant as a whole is decaying, when its forces will resemble the functions performed by the astral body, we shall not effect any cure; on the contrary, we shall rather increase the irregularity in the digestive process. It is not enough simply to know that any particular plant is a remedy for this or that ailment; we must also know when the plant must be gathered if it is to act as a remedy.

We must therefore observe the whole being and becoming of Nature if we are to apply effective plant-remedies and develop a rational therapy. We must also know in making up our preparations that it is not the same to gather the plants in the Autumn as to gather and administer them in the Spring. When we are preparing medicaments we must also learn to know what it means if we pick gentian, for instance, in the first weeks of the month of May; for what man bears within him during the course of twenty-four hours, namely Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, is spread in Nature over a period of 365 days. The process which is enacted in the human being in a period of 24 hours, needs 365 days in Nature.

By this you will see what is involved when we speak of applying anthroposophical principles to therapy. At the present time we have a very serviceable science of healing, and as I have said again and again, what Anthroposophy has to give in respect of an art of Healing must certainly not come into opposition with what is given by the recognised Medicine of to-day. Anthroposophical medicine will stand firmly on the foundations of modern medical science in so far as these foundations are justified. But something more has to be added, namely spiritual insight into the being of man.

Consider once more what I have said in these lectures about the system of nerves-and-senses being permeated by all four members—by the physical body, ether body, astral body and Ego. The metabolic-limb system is also permeated by all four members. But each system is permeated by the other members in a different way. In the metabolic-limb system, the Ego-organisation functions in the activity of will. Everything that causes man and his whole organism to move is contained in the metabolic-limb system; everything that leaves him at rest and fills him with inner experiences, concepts, thoughts and feelings, is contained in the system of nerves-and-senses. An essential difference is shown here. In the system of nerves-and-senses, the physical body and etheric body are of far greater importance than the Ego and astral organisations, while in the metabolic-limb system it is these higher members that are essential. Therefore if the Ego and astral body work too strongly in the nerves and senses, something will arise which this latter system then drives into the other members of the being of man.

Over-emphasis of the Ego and astral organisations within the nerves and senses drives this latter system somehow or other into the metabolic-limb system. There are various ways in which this may take place; the result is what may—in a very general sense—be described as ‘swellings.’ We learn to understand the nature of these swellings when we realise that because of excessive activity of the Ego or the astral body, the system of nerves-and-senses is driven into the rest of the organism.

And now consider the opposite condition: the Ego and astral body withdraw from the metabolic-limb system; the physical and etheric organisations become too strong—they radiate into the system of nerves-and-senses and flood it with those processes which properly belong to the metabolic-limb system: the result is an inflammatory condition. Now we can understand that swellings and conditions of inflammation present a certain polaric contrast to one another. If, then, we know how to drive back the system of nerves-and-senses when it is beginning to be active somewhere in the metabolic-limb system, we shall arrive at a possible means of healing.

Now, one instance where the system of nerves-and-senses is working with terrible consequences in some region of the metabolic-limb system, is carcinoma. Here there is evidence that the system of nerves-and-senses has entered into the metabolic-limb organisation and is making itself effective there. In my second lecture I spoke of a tendency to the formation of a sense-organ which can arise at the wrong place, within the metabolic-limb system. The ear, when it is formed in the right place, is normal; but if a tendency to ear-formation or a tendency to form any other sense-organ—even in the very slightest degree—occurs in the wrong place, then we have to do with carcinomatous growth. We must work against this tendency of the human organism, but a very deep understanding of the whole of the evolution of the world and man is necessary here.

If you study anthroposophical literature, you will find that it gives quite different teaching in regard to cosmology from that given by materialistic science. You will find it stated that the creation of our Earth was preceded by another creation when man did not as yet exist in his present form, but was, in certain respects, still spiritually higher than the animal kingdom. The senses of man, as we know them, did not exist. They only arose in their perfected state during Earth-evolution. As tendencies, of course, they were there long before, but in their final form, as they now are, penetrated by the Ego-organisation, they did not come into being until the Earth was formed. The human Ego ‘shot,’ as it were, into eyes, ears and the other senses during this period. Hence if the Ego-organisation becomes too active, a sense does not only form in the organism in a normal way but there is too great a general tendency to create senses. This results in carcinoma. What, then, must we do in order to discover a remedy for this disease? We must go back to earlier conditions of Earth development and search for something that is a last remnant, a heritage, from earlier periods of evolution. We find such a remnant in plants that are parasitic—such as viscum: forms that grow as the mistletoe grows upon trees—forms that have not come to the point of being able to root themselves in the Earth as such but must feed upon what is living. Why must they do this? Because they have, as a matter of fact, evolved before our Earth assumed its solid, mineral form. We have in mistletoe to-day something that could not become a pure Earth-form; it had to take root upon a plant of another character—because the mineral kingdom was the latest of the kingdoms to evolve upon the Earth. In the substance of mistletoe we have something which, if it is prepared in the proper way, will have a beneficial effect upon carcinoma and work in the direction of driving the misplaced formation of a sense-organ out of the human organism.

If we penetrate into Nature, it is possible to fight against those things which, appearing in the form of some illness, have fallen away from their normal evolution. Man is too much ‘Earth’ when he develops cancer; he brings forth the Earth-forces too strongly within his being. We must combat these exaggerated Earth-forces with something that is the result of a state of evolution when the mineral kingdom and the present Earth were not yet in existence. Therefore, working on the basis of anthroposophical research, we make a special preparation from viscum.

I have now put certain brief details before you. I could add a great deal more, for we have already worked out and produced a number of remedies. Let me, for example, mention the following. If the metabolic system radiates into the extreme periphery of the senses-organisation, a certain form of illness is produced—so-called hay-fever. And here we have the opposite of what I described just now. When the system of nerves-and-senses slips downwards so to speak into the metabolic-limb system, this gives rise to swellings. On the other hand, if the metabolic-limb system enters into the region of nerves and senses, we get such manifestations as are present, for example, in hay-fever. In this case it is a question of paralysing those centrifugal processes where the metabolic-limb system is induced too strongly towards the periphery of the organism, by giving something which will stem back the etheric forces. We try to do this with a preparation (Gencydo) made from fruits which are covered with rind; the forces connected with this rind-formation have the effect of driving back the etheric forces in the metabolism. The excessively active centrifugal forces which give rise to hay-fever are combated by strong centripetal forces. Both the pathological and therapeutical processes can be quite clearly perceived. And indeed we find that the best results are obtained with our remedies precisely in those cases that are the most resistent to treatment at the present time. Instances of the treatment of hay-fever show that excellent results have been obtained.

And so I could give you many details to show that the insight into the nature of man which is gained by anthroposophical research builds the bridge between pathology and therapy. For how, in the last resort, do the Ego and astral organisms work? They destroy. And because of this destructive process we are beings of soul and spirit. When something is being disintegrated, a purely poisonous activity is taking place and that destroys the organs. If an organ becomes rampant or hypertrophied, we must disintegrate it. The disintegrative activity belongs to the astral body and Ego. Poisons in an external form—they may be either metallic or vegetable poisons—are, in their effect upon the human organism related to the astral body and Ego. We must realise to what extent a poisonous process is taking place in the human organism inasmuch as the Ego and astral body are at work. There is a correspondence between the budding and sprouting forces of the plants—which we eat without harm—and the physical and etheric forces in the human being; and we must learn to recognise the correspondence between the activity of the Ego and the astral body upon the human organism and the working of the forces and substances of those plants which we cannot eat because they are harmful but which, because they resemble the normally destructive processes in man, can work as remedies.

Thus we learn to divide the whole of Nature, firstly into those forms of life which resemble our physical and etheric bodies and which we eat for the purposes of growth and development; and secondly into the destructive elements, i.e., the poisonous forces which resemble the working of the astral body and Ego-organisation. If we understand the four members of man's being in this sense, we shall regard the polarity between the nutritious substances and the poisonous substances quite differently. The study of illness will then be a continuation of the study of Nature. By an insight into both health and disease—a spiritual insight—our whole conception of Nature will be immeasurably enriched. But there is one condition attached to such study. In our present age, people prefer to embark upon some particular study when the object in question is quite still. They like to bring this object as far as possible into a state of complete rest so that the longest possible time can be spent in observing it. Anthroposophy, on the contrary, prefers that whatever is being studied should be as far as possible in a state of movement; everything must be mobile and living, observed in the presence of spirit, for only so do we draw near to life and reality. To this we must add something else, and that is the courage to heal. This courage is just as necessary as the actual knowledge of how to heal; it is not nebulous or fantastic optimism but a feeling of certainty which makes us feel in any case of illness: ‘I have insight into this and I will try to cure it.’ Great things result from this. But if we are to gain this certainty, it is above all necessary to have the courage to win through to an understanding of the being of man and of Nature. Naturally, therefore, the kind of remedies that we obtain can only come from a living contact with medicine.

Close to the Goetheanum, where we are striving for anthroposophical knowledge which shall satisfy the souls of men, there is a centre which is devoted to healing—near to the Mystery-centre, a therapeutical centre, because a comprehensive knowledge of the relation between the human being and the world must include not only an understanding of the healing processes but also of the processes of disease. A profound insight into the Cosmos is only possible when we are able to survey not only the tendencies which lead to sickness but equally those which lead to health.

If the forces connected with growth in the organism were not continually being repressed, man's being of soul and spirit could never function. The very manifestations which in the normal condition of mankind turn to illness, to retrogression of development, must indeed exist in order that he may become a thinking being. If man could not be ill, he could not be a spiritual being. If the functions of thinking, feeling and willing manifest in an abnormal form, man falls ill. The liver and kidneys must carry out the very same processes that give rise to thinking, to feeling and to willing; but these processes lead to disease when they arise in exaggerated form. The fact that man can be ill makes it also possible for him to be a being who can think, feel and will.

Anthroposophical science can enrich the science of healing with spiritual knowledge as I have shown; but it can also do so because it fills the doctor with devotion and readiness for self-sacrifice. Anthroposophy not only deepens our thinking, our intellectuality, but also our feeling—indeed our whole nature. The answer to the question: What can the Art of Healing gain through Spiritual Science? is this: the doctor, as a healer, can become wholly man; not merely one who thinks about a case of illness with his head but who has inner realisation of the state of illness, knowing that to heal is a noble mission. The doctor will only find the right place for his profession in the social order when he perceives that illness is the shadow side of spiritual development. In order to understand the shadow he must also gaze upon the light—upon the nature and the being of the spiritual processes themselves. If the doctor learns thus to behold spiritual processes to behold the light that is working in the being of man, he will be able to judge of the shadow. Wherever there is light, there must be shadow; wherever there is spiritual development there must be manifestations of illness as its shadow-forms. Only he can master them who can truly gaze upon the light.

This, then, is what Anthroposophy can give to the doctor and to the art of healing.

Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses—either by means of experiment, or by direct observation—and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone—because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities—during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude—in thought—must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following:—The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being—between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking—we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism—the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself—the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity—of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles—the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation—the “I am I”—or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees—in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs—a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation—organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration.¹ And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship—if I may say so—between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so—when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it—one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains—in fact, all forms of silicious substance—provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency—a consuming tendency—but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies—in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world—and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out—that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate—supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego—which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego—then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear—goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical—and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned—it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious—that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured—out of fluids or solids—when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings—the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man—in both health and disease—is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces—that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos—become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course—that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant—the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions)—and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself—something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces.—TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle.—TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being—an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified—namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist—in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies—but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets—into the mysteries of Nature—is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures—of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained—not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves—was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness—that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty—that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved—body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things—to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation—to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge”—the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world—to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike—instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things—to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial—if I may call it so—which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing—medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

• 1. The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.

Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses—either by means of experiment, or by direct observation—and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone—because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities—during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude—in thought—must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following:—The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being—between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking—we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism—the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself—the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity—of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles—the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation—the “I am I”—or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees—in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs—a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation—organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration.¹ And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship—if I may say so—between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so—when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it—one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains—in fact, all forms of silicious substance—provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency—a consuming tendency—but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies—in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world—and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out—that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate—supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego—which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego—then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear—goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical—and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned—it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious—that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured—out of fluids or solids—when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings—the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man—in both health and disease—is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces—that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos—become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course—that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant—the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions)—and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself—something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces.—TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle.—TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being—an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified—namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist—in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies—but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets—into the mysteries of Nature—is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures—of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained—not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves—was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness—that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty—that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved—body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things—to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation—to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge”—the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world—to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike—instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things—to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial—if I may call it so—which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing—medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

• 1. The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.

Since it has been requested that I speak about the therapeutic principles that have grown out of the anthroposophical world view on one of our evenings, I am very happy to comply with this request, but it is difficult to speak briefly about this subject in particular. It is difficult because the subject is an extremely broad one and it is hardly possible to give a proper idea of the essentials in a very short lecture, which can only be aphoristic. On the other hand, certain considerations that have to be made are somewhat remote from general human consciousness. Nevertheless, I will try to explain the things that are important as generally as possible this evening.

The fact that there is also a medical current within the anthroposophical movement certainly does not stem from the fact that we as anthroposophists want to be everywhere and want to poke our noses into everything. That is certainly not the case. But as the Anthroposophical movement sought to make its way in the world, physicians also joined the movement, physicians who were seriously striving, and a large, relatively large number of such physicians had come to a more or less clear awareness of how shaky the views of today's officially accepted medicine actually are, and how the foundations for the actual understanding of disease processes and their healing are often lacking.

Official science lacks these foundations because what today claims validity, scientific validity, actually only wants to rely on the natural science that is generally used today. And this natural science, in turn, only believes it is walking securely with what it can determine in a mechanical, physical or chemical way in external nature. And it then applies what it finds through physics and chemistry about external natural processes to where it wants to come to an understanding of the human being. But even if a kind of concentration, microcosmic concentration of all world processes, is contained in the human being, the external physical and chemical processes in the human organism itself are never present in the form in which they take place outside in nature. Man takes up into himself the substances of the earth, which are not merely passive substances, but which are actually always imbued with natural processes and phenomena. A substance only appears on the surface to be something that is at rest. In reality, everything in the substance is alive and in motion. And so man also takes up into his organism these processes, this weaving and living, as they take place chemically and physically in nature, but he transforms it immediately in his organism, he makes it into something else in his organism.

What becomes of the natural processes in the human organism can only be understood by truly and truly observing human beings. But today's natural science, by wanting to rely solely on the physical and chemical, actually excludes from its field of study what actually takes place in the human being as human, and also, for example, in the physical body of the human being as human. For nothing takes place in the physical body that is not at the same time influenced by etheric, astral or ego processes. But because natural science completely disregards these ego processes, these astral processes, this etheric life and weaving, it does not actually get anywhere near the human being. Therefore, this natural science cannot really look into the human interior in such a way that it can clearly see how the external chemical and physical processes in the human being then continue to work, how they continue to work in the healthy person, and how they continue to work in the sick person.

But how can one judge the effect of a remedy in the right way if one cannot understand how some natural thing that we introduce into the organism, or with which we treat the organism, continues to work in the human organism.

And so we can say that the greatest conceivable progress in the medical field in modern times has actually only been made in the field of surgery, where it is a matter of external, one might say mechanical, handling.

On the other hand, in the field of actual therapy – not in my opinion, but precisely in the opinion of those doctors who have become aware of all this – there is great confusion because one cannot see the connection between any natural thing and its effect on the disease if one actually excludes the human being from scientific observation due to one's particular view of natural science.

Now, since anthroposophy is based precisely on getting to know the human being in his innermost being, both insofar as he is a supersensible being and insofar as he is a sensual being, knowledge can also be gained from anthroposophy about treating people with these or those natural remedies in the event of illness.

In fact, we are already faced with a certain limit to our knowledge in medicine if we only ask about the actual nature of the disease. What is the disease? Based on today's scientific knowledge, this question: What is the disease? — cannot be answered at all. Because, according to these scientific views, what is the sum of all the processes that take place in a healthy person? From the head, from the outermost end of the head to the last end of the toes on the foot, these are the natural processes. But what then are the processes that take place in the liver, kidneys, head, heart, wherever, during an illness? They are natural processes. Everything that is a healthy process is a natural process; everything that is a disease process is also a natural process. Why is it that, under the one kind of process, the human being is healthy and under the other kind of process, he is sick?

The point is that one does not speak in generalities, speaking so nebulously: Well, the healthy natural processes are normal, the unhealthy natural processes are not normal. — There really comes “in due time”, when one knows nothing, “a word”!

The problem is that if you only apply general natural science, as is common today, you approach the human being in such a way that you prefer not to approach the living human being at all, but rather the corpse. You take some piece of the organism here or there and imagine what healthy or diseased natural processes are taking place within it. And so you don't really care whether you take tissue from the head or the liver or the big toe or something like that. Everything can be traced back to the cell. Histology, the study of tissue, has actually become the most highly developed of all human studies. Well, if you go into the smallest parts and omit all the interrelationships of forces, then, just as all cows are grey in the dark, all organs in the human being are the same. But then you get a nocturnal “grey cow science”, not a real science that deals with the specificity of the individual organs in the human being.

What must serve as the basis for this, I only dared to express a few years ago, although it has occupied me for more than thirty to thirty-five years now. But one usually only imagines that spiritual science comes to its results so easily. One need only look into the spiritual world and one would discover everything, whereas it is more difficult when one has to work in laboratories, in physics cabinets or in a clinic; there one must make an effort — at least that is what one thinks. In spiritual science, one only has to look into the world of the spirit and one can discover everything. But it is not like that. Especially conscientious spiritual research requires more effort and, above all, more responsibility than working in a laboratory or at a clinic or an observatory. And so it is that although the first conception of what I now want to briefly indicate in principle was before me about thirty-five years ago, I was only able to express it a few years ago, after everything had been processed and, above all, verified in the context of the entire official natural science of the present day. And it was precisely under the influence of these principles about the structure of the human being that the therapeutic current within our anthroposophical movement came into being.

We must not forget that, even when we have a person before us in their physical form, we must distinguish three distinct limbs. These three different limbs can be named in a variety of ways. However, the best way to approach them is to characterize them by saying that the human being has, as the one system of their physical being, the nerve-sense system, which is mainly localized in the head.

The human being has a second system, the rhythmic system; this includes breathing and blood circulation. But it also includes, for example, the rhythmic activities of digestion and so on. This is the second system of the human being.

And the third system of the human being is the connection between the movement system, the limb system and the actual metabolic system. This connection will be immediately clear to you when you consider that it is precisely through the movement of the limbs that the metabolism is promoted, and that actually the limbs are always connected with the metabolic organs in a very organic way. Anatomy will also show you this immediately. Just see how the legs continue inwardly into the metabolic organs and how the arms also continue inwardly. So that we can distinguish three systems in the human being: the nerve-sense system, localized mainly in the head; the rhythmic system, localized mainly in the chest, around the heart; and the metabolic-limb system, localized mainly in the limbs and the attached metabolic organs.

But we must not imagine this human anatomy in the way that a professor once did in an attempt to discredit the anthroposophical movement. He did not try to penetrate what was actually meant by this structure, but he tried to blacken this structure of the human being and said: These anthroposophists claim that the human being consists of three systems, the head, the trunk - chest and stomach - and the limbs. Yes, of course, you can immediately ridicule a thing in this way.

For it is not the case that the nervous-sensory system is only in the head. It is mainly in the head, but it then extends over the whole organism, so that the human being has spread his head organization over the whole organism. Similarly, the rhythmic system extends up and down over the whole organism. Man is thus, again, a rhythmic system in space, and also a metabolic-limb system. When you move your eyes, the eyes are limbs. These systems are not juxtaposed in space, but are structured into one another. They are interlocking, and one must become accustomed to precise thinking if one wants to properly assess this structure of the human being.

Now the two systems, the first and the third, the nervous sense system and the limb metabolism system, are actually polar opposites. What the one produces, the other destroys; what the other destroys, the one produces. So they work in completely opposite ways. And the middle system, the rhythmic system, establishes the relationship between the two. There is a kind of oscillation between the two, so that a harmony can always take place between the destruction of one system and the building of the other. If we consider the metabolic system, for example, the metabolic system naturally works with its greatest intensity in the human abdomen. But what is going on in the human abdomen must evoke a polar opposite activity in the human head, in the nerve-sense system, if the human being is to be healthy.

Now, if you imagine that this intense activity, which is actually the activity of the human digestive system, extends to the nerve-sense system due to its intensity being too strong and too great, so that the activity which should actually be in the metabolic system, encroaches on the nerve-sense system, then you have two, albeit natural processes, for my sake, but you can immediately see how the one natural process becomes abnormal. It just belongs in the metabolic system, and it breaks through, as it were, into the nerve-sense system.

This is how the various forms of a disease arise that is treated by medicine today as a somewhat neglected disease, but, I would say, by a large part of humanity as a less neglected disease, because these various forms of the disease are known everywhere. This is how what is known as the various forms of migraine arises. And in order to understand migraine in its various forms, one must grasp this process, which, in its intensity, as it is there, is supposed to take place in the metabolic system and which breaks through into the nervous sense system, so that the nerves and the senses themselves are treated in such a way that the metabolism shoots into them instead of remaining in its actual place.

The reverse can take place. The process that is supposed to be most intense in the nerve-sense system, which is quite contrary to the metabolic process, can in turn break through in a certain way after the metabolic system. So that in the metabolic system, instead of there being only a very subordinate nerve-sense process, an intensified nerve-sense process takes place, so that, as it were, what belongs to the head breaks through and occurs in the abdomen, head activity thus occurs in the abdomen. When this happens, the dangerous disease of abdominal typhus arises in the person.

Thus, by thoroughly understanding this threefold human being, we can see how the process of illness develops out of the healthy process in the human organism. If our head, with its nervous-sense system, were not organized as it is, we could never have typhoid fever. If our abdomen were not organized as it is, we could never have migraine. But the activity of the head should remain in the head, and the activity of the abdomen in the abdomen. If they break through, then these types of disease arise.

And as with these two particularly characteristic forms of disease, one can point to other forms of disease that always arise from a certain activity that belongs to a certain organ system asserting itself in a different place, in a different organ system.

If you proceed only anatomically, you see how the smallest parts are arranged in the organism's tissue. But you do not see this effect of polar opposite activity. You can only study the nerve cell to see that it is organized in the opposite way to, say, the liver cell. If you can see the whole organism in such a way that it appears to you in its threefold structure, then you also notice how the nerve cell is a cell that constantly wants to dissolve, that constantly wants to be broken down if it is to be healthy, and how a liver cell is something that constantly wants to be built up if it is to be healthy. These are polar activities. They interact in the right way when they are properly distributed in the organism, and they interact in the wrong way when they penetrate each other.

The rhythmic system is in the middle and always wants to create a balance between the opposing polar activities of the nervous-sensory system and the metabolic-limb system.

I would now like to select a specific example to give you a sense of how – I can of course only discuss it in aphorisms – we can find the relationship between the healing agent taken from nature and its forces and the forces of illness and health at work within the human being.

Let us turn our attention to a very specific ore found in nature, the so-called antimony ore. Antimony has an extraordinarily interesting property when you look at it externally. It forms in nature in such a way that, so to speak, skewers arise, rod-shaped, spear-like structures that lie next to each other, so that one finds the antimony ore in nature in such a way that, if I draw it schematically, one could draw it something like this. It grows almost like a mineral moss or a mineral lichen. You can see that, to a certain extent, this mineral wants to arrange itself in thread-like form. It can be seen even more clearly how this mineral, this ore, wants to arrange itself in thread-like form when it is subjected to a certain physical-chemical process. Then it becomes even more fibrillar. It arranges itself in very thin fibers. But what is particularly significant is what happens when this antimony is subjected to a certain kind of combustion process. You get a white smoke that can attach itself to walls and then become shiny, mirror-like.* This is called antimony mirror. It is not very well respected today, but it was used a great deal in ancient medicine, precisely because of the ancient knowledge from which I have repeatedly spoken to you in the morning lectures. This antimony mirror, that is, what develops only from the combustion process and can be deposited on walls, making them shiny as glass, is something extraordinarily important.

Another property is added to all this. I will just emphasize this: If you subject antimony to certain electrolytic processes and bring it to the so-called electrolytic cathode, you only need to exert a small influence on the cathode after you have brought the antimony and subjected it to the electrolytic process, and you get a small antimony explosion. In short, this antimony has the most interesting properties imaginable.

If we introduce a certain moderate dosage of antimony into the human organism, we can study the various processes to see how the same forces that behave as I have described in antimony actually do experience their continuation in the human organism, and how they take on all kinds of forms of force and all kinds of forms of action there.

These forms of activity – I cannot, of course, go into the details and evidence here, I just want to briefly sketch out the inner connections – these processes that occur in the human organism are particularly strong, for example, wherever blood coagulates. So they strengthen and promote blood clotting. But if we now examine the human organism using methods that also belong to the threefold structure of the human organism, which gradually allow us to look into the human being and recognize how the individual systems in the various organs behave, if we look into the human organism in this way, we find that what lives in antimony does not merely live outside in the mineral antimony, but that it is actually a context of forces that lives in the human organism itself, that is always present in the human organism, in a healthy organism, and that it also takes on forms in the sick human organism, as I have explained to you now.

This antimony process, I would like to say, which is present in the human organism itself, is polar opposite to another process. It is opposed to the process that occurs wherever the plastically active forces, for example the cell-forming forces, the cell-rounding forces, occur, where that which actually forms the cell substance of the human organism occurs. I would like to call these forces, because they are preferably contained in the protein substance, for example, the albuminizing forces. And so we have in the human organism the forces that we find outside in nature, in antimony in particular, when we subject the antimony to combustion, for example, and bring it up to the antimony level. The forces that work outside in the antimony, we also have them working in the human organism. But we also have the opposite forces at work, the albuminizing forces, which bring the antimony forces to a standstill, remove them.

These two systems of forces, the albumino- and antimonio-metallizing forces, now counteract each other in such a way that they must be in a certain equilibrium in the human organism. It must now be recognized that, for example, the process which I described to you earlier in principle and which underlies abdominal typhus, is essentially due to the fact that the equilibrium between these two systems of forces is disturbed.

In order to gain a true insight into the human organism, we need to be able to draw on what I have just discussed from a wide range of perspectives – albeit non-medical – in these morning lectures during this course.

We have seen how the human being not only has this physical body, but also an etheric or formative forces body, an astral body, an ego organization. And just yesterday I was able to explain to you how the physical body and the formative forces body, on the one hand, and the I and the astral body, on the other, are intimately connected, but how the astral body and the formative forces body or ether body are more loosely connected, because they separate every night.

This connection, which consists of the interplay of the forces of the astral body and the etheric body, is now radically disturbed in abdominal typhus. In the case of abdominal typhus, the astral body becomes weak and is unable to work intensively into the physical body because it works for itself, causing a preponderance that effectively pushes down the nerve-sense organization, which is mainly subject to the astral body. Instead of being transformed into the metabolic organization, it remains as such, as astral activity. The astral body works for itself. It does not properly work into the ether body. This is how the symptoms of the disease arise, which give the symptoms of typhoid fever.

Now, what occurs in antimony is that the antimony, so to speak, denies its mineral nature, becomes crystallized in a bourgeois way, that even the antimony mirror, where it is deposited, appears like snow flowers on a window, thus also showing the inner crystallization power as in nature, this crystallization power This crystallization power, which becomes active in antimony, works when we process it in the appropriate way as a medicine and introduce it into the organism, so that it supports this organism, so that it can push its astral body with its forces in the right way into the etheric body, and bring these bodies back into the right relationship.

With the remedy made from antimony in the appropriate way, we support the process that is opposed to the typhoid process. And in this way, with the antimony remedy in particular – to which, depending on whether the disease takes this or that course, other substances must be added, which in turn have a similar relationship to the human organism – one can fight the disease with this remedy, to which other substances are added, disease by stimulating and supporting the processes in the organism, so that it develops its own, I might say antimonizing power, which then tends to bring about the right rhythm in the interaction of the etheric body and the astral body.

Thus, anthroposophical observation leads us to see the relationship between what works outside in nature, in natural things, as I have shown you with the example of antimony, and what works inside the human organism. You can follow these albuminous forces, which have a plastic, rounding effect, and the forces that work along lines, right into the germ cell.

For those who have really acquired knowledge in this field – however unpleasant it is for them to say so, because they know that they will arouse the hatred and antipathy of the corresponding people – and who can see into the workings of the human organism, the otherwise truly most wonderful microscopic examinations of the ovum, of the germ cell, seem extraordinarily amateurish. They observe the ovum as such on the outside, the development of the so-called centrosomes – you can read about this in any embryology book – without knowing how these albuminizing forces, which also control the whole organism, work in opposition, polar opposition to the antimonizing forces. The rounding of the ovum as such is caused by the albumino-coagulating force; the centrosomes after fertilization are caused by the antimonio-coagulating processes.

But this happens in the whole human body. And by preparing the remedy in the right way and knowing, through the diagnosis, where the human organism needs support, we supply the human organism with the forces it needs to counteract a disease process.

By introducing anthroposophical perspectives into medicine, we are actually achieving the goal of considering the real and correct relationship between the macrocosm, the whole world, and the human being. And just as I have pointed out antimony to you – I would of course have to say a lot about antimony if I wanted to discuss it scientifically in detail now, but I just want to hint at the principles – and the processes that it can bring forth, that it has within it when it is treated in one way or another, I could now for example, I could also show you the whole behavior within nature and its processes, let us say for that which is called quartz as a mineral, silicic acid, silicea, which is mixed with granite as one of its components, which crystallizes transparently in its deposits and is so hard that it can no longer be scratched with a knife, and is precisely a component of granite. If this substance is treated in a certain way, when it is administered to the organism – in the right dosage, of course, which must be determined by diagnosis – it acquires the property of supporting whatever is to take effect in the nerve-sense system, whatever the organism is to muster in the nerve-sense system as the inherent forces of this nerve-sense system. So that one can say: what the senses are actually supposed to do, one supports when one administers this remedy, which is prepared from silicon, from quartz, to the person in the right way. One must then, depending on the secondary symptoms, add other substances, but in the main it is about the effect of what lies in the silicic acid formation process. When this silicic acid formation process is introduced into the human organism, it supports an activity in the nerve-sense system that is too weak. It then has the right strength. Now, when this nerve-sense activity becomes too weak, the digestive activity breaks through to the head. Migraine-like conditions arise. If we now support the sense activity, the nerve sense activity in the right way with a remedy that has been produced in the right way from silicic acid, from quartz, Silicea, then the nerve sense system in the migraine patient becomes so strong that it can in turn push back the broken-through digestive process.

I am, of course, presenting these things to you somewhat crudely, but you will see what is important from this. It is essential to really understand the healthy and sick human organism, not only in terms of its cellular composition, but also in terms of the forces that act in the same sense or in a polar or rhythmic way in this human organism, in order to then seek out that which can combat this or that pathological process in the human organism when it is at work in nature.

Thus, for example, we can find how the process contained in phosphorus is a process in the external nature that, when introduced into the human organism, has a supportive effect on a certain kind of internal inability of the human organism: namely, when the human organism, in relation to certain forces that should always be at work within it when it is healthy, becomes incapable of allowing these forces to work in the right way, when it has too little strength to allow certain forces to work within it that are actually a kind of organic combustion process that is always present when substances are transformed in the human organism. Organic combustion processes occur with every movement, with everything that a person does, even with those things that are done internally. Now, the human organism can become too weak to regulate these organic combustion processes in the right way. They must be inhibited in a certain way. If they are not inhibited enough, they develop in a vehement way. The organic combustion processes actually always have an immeasurable, unlimited intensity by themselves, otherwise there would immediately be too much fatigue here or there, or one would not be able to get any further than a moving person. These organic combustion processes actually have, I want to say, unlimited intensity, and the organism must continually have the possibility to inhibit them.

If these inhibiting forces are absent, either in an organ system or in the whole organism, if the organism has become too weak to inhibit its organic combustion processes in the right way, then tuberculosis arises in its most diverse forms. I would say that it is only through this organic powerlessness, through this inability to inhibit the combustion processes, that the suitable breeding ground for the bacilli is created; these can then be found on this breeding ground.

Nothing should be said here against the bacillus theory. The bacillus theory is very useful. From the different way in which the bacilli appear here or there, one naturally recognizes various things; for diagnosis, an extraordinary amount can be recognized from it. It is not my intention to speak out against official medicine, but rather to continue it where it reaches certain limits. And it can be continued by applying the aspects of anthroposophy to it.

If phosphorus is now added to the organism, these abilities to inhibit the organic combustion processes are supported. However, it must be taken into account that this inhibition can originate from a wide variety of organ systems. If, for example, it originates from the system that works primarily in the bones, then the phosphorus effect in the human organism must be supported by specializing it, so to speak, specifically for the bone side. This is done by combining the phosphorus remedy with calcium or calcium salt in some way that is revealed by a more precise study of the matter. If the patient has tuberculosis of the small intestine, some copper compounds will be added to the phosphorus in the correct dosage. If the patient has pulmonary tuberculosis, iron, for example, will be added to the phosphorus. But then, because pulmonary tuberculosis is an extremely complicated disease, other admixtures may also be considered under certain circumstances. So you can see that the possibility of a real therapy is based on how the chemical and physical processes in the human organism continue, how they continue to work inside.

Official medicine often starts from the view that just as the antimony forces work out there in antimony, so they also work in the human organism. That is not the case. We must be clear about how these processes continue to work in the human organism. And that can be seen in particular if we apply the actually anthroposophical insights to the experiments at issue.

As we saw with antimony and its powers, antimony establishes the rhythm between the astral body and the etheric body or formative forces body. In the case of the forces at work in silicic acid, quartz, and quartz, in the silicea, can be seen to be particularly suitable for establishing the correct relationship between the ego and the astral body when it is disturbed, in order to have a healing effect on the nervous and sensory system. While it is the case with lime – especially with the lime used from the lime secretions of animals – that you get remedies that establish the right relationship between the formative forces body and the physical body.

So one can say: The correct view of the human being leads one to use lime or similar substances, namely substances secreted by the animal organism, such as oyster shells, to restore the right relationship when it is disturbed, which always manifests itself in physical processes, in disease processes. To restore the right relationship between the etheric body and the physical body. In the preparation of remedies, one must reflect on this in the case of such chalky or similar secretions.

If one is dealing with an arrhythmic interaction between the formative body and the astral body, one must pay attention to such things as are present, for example, in antimony, but also in numerous other metals, but especially in the components that of the plants, that is to say, they are particularly strong in the leaves and in the trunk, while those forces that correspond to the phosphorus process are preferably contained in the flower organs of the plants, and those processes that correspond to the silica process are contained in the root organs of the plants. So that one can also find the relationship between the forces that are in the different parts of the plants. The root forces have a definite affinity and relationship to the human head and nervous-sense system. The leaf and stem organs have a special relationship to the rhythmic system and the flower organs have a special relationship to the abdominal, metabolic system. Therefore, if one often wants to help the digestive, metabolic system in a simple way, it is often enough simply by choosing certain flower organs to make into tea, after having diagnosed in the right way. In this way one helps the digestive organs. While one must extract the salts of the roots through a special extraction process if one wants to obtain a remedy that acts particularly on the nerve-sense process, on the head organs, for example.

And so, on the one hand, you have to understand nature and, on the other hand, the human organism. Then you can really find the remedies in nature in such a way that you can see how the two things are connected, that you don't just have to try clinically: “How does it work?” and then, you see, you make a series of cases and you note that ninety or seventy per cent of them show some favorable result, and that you were mistaken in forty cases. Then you treat the matter statistically and according to whether the statistics favor this or that, you regard it as a remedy or not as a remedy.

I can only deal with these things briefly and aphoristically in order to show you how, without falling into amateurism or medical sectarianism, a strictly scientific approach can be taken to deal with disease processes using remedies that come from human observation.

Just as important as recognizing the right natural substance and natural process to be processed into a remedy is the particular way in which it is used.

Precisely because one can act either on the nerve-sense system, in order to bring about recovery in the indicated manner from it in the right way, or on the rhythmic system, or on the metabolic-limb system, precisely because one must act on these individual systems, it is important, it is essential to also know how the method of treatment is to be administered. Because almost every remedy can be used in three different ways. Either it is introduced into the human being through the mouth into the stomach and so on, so in the way the human being takes in the remedy, one counts on the human being's metabolism, on the metabolic system and on how the metabolic system then affects the other systems. Therefore, there are remedies that are used in this way in particular: they are introduced to the human being through the mouth and stomach and so on.

But then there are also remedies that, in the most eminent sense, have to be used in such a way that they already affect the rhythmic system through the way they are used. In this respect, antimony is particularly suited to finding the right treatment method for this point. This is where injections and injection methods come in. And the remedy that is inoculated into the blood, or is otherwise injected, is the one that is counted on to have an effect on the rhythmic process of the human being.

For those remedies used in baths and ointments, or even where it is a matter of treating the human organism externally and mechanically, for example in massage processes or similar, where the aim is to apply the remedy or the healing process to the person in a more external way, it is assumed that the healing method will act on the nerve-sense system.

And so, in turn, one can work through any other system in a variety of ways to achieve the healing process. Let us assume we have Silicea, a quartz. It makes a difference whether we have a remedy that we prepare and that is to be taken orally, or whether it is injected. If we assume that it is taken orally, we want to introduce the quartz processes through the digestive system by way of how it is processed in the digestive system and the digestive system in turn sends forces into the nerve-sense system. But if we expect that they should be sent more into the nervous-sense system, by inserting them into the blood organism, the respiratory rhythm, whereby in turn healing can take place indirectly through this rhythm, if we thus intend this, then we inject.

If we intend to bring any aromatic-ethereal substance, such as that contained in a plant blossom, to bear through the digestive organ, we make a tea that we introduce into the stomach through the mouth. If we want to work by bringing the essential oil, which has an aromatic effect on the nerve-sense system, directly into effect or through the nerve-sense system on the rhythmic process, then we make some kind of bath out of the juices of these flowers, by adding the juice of these flowers to the water and preparing a bath out of it. There we act on the nerve-sense system.

And so you see how the healing effect also depends on the way the individual substances are treated in relation to the human being.

In order to achieve something in this way, our clinical-therapeutic institutes with their corresponding laboratories and other enterprises have been founded by physicians who have joined our anthroposophical movement, so that on the one hand remedies and healing methods can be tried out, and on the other hand the remedies can be produced. We have such clinical and chemical-pharmaceutical institutes in Arlesheim near Dornach and in Stuttgart.

In particular, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim should be mentioned, which is under the excellent leadership of Dr. Wegman, who has a particularly beneficial effect on this institute because she has what I would call the courage to heal. For it is precisely when one looks into the complexity of the natural processes from which the healing processes are to be drawn, on the one hand, and into the tremendous complexity of the health and disease processes in the human being, on the other, when one is confronted with this immense field – and one is always confronted with this immense field, even if one only has a certain number of patients – then healing requires courage.

An International Pharmaceutical Laboratory is affiliated to this Arlesheim Institute, where the remedies are produced. Today they can be used all over the world, if only the right ways and means are sought. The laboratory produces the means; people just have to find the means and ways to the laboratory, that is the point. People have to find the right means and ways to get to the remedies. The work is not done in an amateurish way, nor is today's science denied; rather, today's science is only continued.

Once this knowledge has taken root in the broadest circles, we can be truly unconcerned about the success of such a movement as the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Arlesheim. But it is difficult to really bring to bear in the world a therapy based on a full understanding of the human being, with its remedies, in the face of today's purely materialistic direction. Here one would actually have to count on the insight of every person who cares about the health of their fellow human beings.

Now, by first pointing out what can be achieved through natural remedies and their appropriate use, it is of course not ruled out what can be achieved by taking a more spiritual-soul approach to healing. In this area, particularly fruitful observations are made. If we now look at the hygienic-therapeutic aspect, which must always be included in a proper education, we see how the way we affect children's souls and spirits through teaching – when I give educational lectures, I discuss these things – can have the most diverse healing and pathogenic effects, perhaps not immediately, but over the course of the life process. I will mention just one. For example, the teacher can proceed in the right way with regard to the child's memory by not expecting too much or too little of him. If he proceeds wrongly, if he demands too much of the memory in the eighth, ninth, tenth, or eleventh year of life, if he does not have the right pedagogical tact in this direction, then what the soul must accomplish in an excessive memory activity, in an artificially cultivated memory activity, will later in life express itself as all kinds of physical illnesses. A connection can be demonstrated between diabetes and incorrect memory methods in teaching. While, on the other hand, the disruption of memory in another way can certainly affect the child in an unfavorable way.

I can only mention this in principle, because time is already so very advanced. But from this one can see how not only health and illness are affected by natural remedies, but how the soul itself works in a very special way for health and illness.

And from there, we can also find our way to those methods where we try to bring about healing processes through purely spiritual-soul influences from person to person, which I cannot describe in detail today, of course, due to the limited time. But it is very easy to fall prey to amateurism in this area. One can, for example, entertain the belief that so-called mental illnesses are most easily cured by spiritual influences. Mental illnesses are characterized by the fact that it is actually almost impossible to reach the patient on a soul-spiritual level. That is precisely the case with so-called mental illnesses: the soul closes itself off to external influences. But one will always find that especially in the so-called mental illnesses, which actually go by their name wrongly, physical disease processes are present somewhere hidden. Before dabbling in mental illnesses, one should actually correctly diagnose the physical source of the disease, which is sometimes very hidden, and then one will be able to work charitably by healing the physical organism.

In the case of physical illnesses, it will be much more a matter of helping through all kinds of spiritual and psychological influences, which are usually applied in a very amateurish way today – I don't want to go into that now. In this respect, much blessing can be bestowed in this regard, in many ways the external process, which is to be brought about by remedies and the like, can be supported.

I can only hint at this. The methods based on anthroposophy certainly do not exclude therapeutic influences of soul and spirit, but include them. We prove this by the fact that at the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim-Dornach, in addition to physical healing methods, you can find so-called eurythmy therapy.

This eurythmy therapy consists of transforming what you see here as artistic eurythmy in the moving human being, in the human being in his or her structure, but moving in space, transforming the vocalizing in such a way that the person moves in healthy movements, but ones that are derived from eurythmy, that one applies the vocalizing movements in such a way that one supports precisely the forces that I mentioned earlier as the albuminizing forces in the person. While the consonantizing forces support the antimonisizing forces in many ways.

In this way, consonant and vowel eurythmy therapy can work together to restore the balance between these two types of forces. And it can be seen, especially when things are done properly, not in a dilettantish way, how other healing processes, especially chronic illnesses, can be greatly supported by this eurythmy therapy.

This eurythmy therapy is actually based on the fact that spiritual and mental processes are evoked by what a person performs with the limbs of his body. If we know which movements arise spontaneously in a healthy human organism, then we can also find the corresponding movements that have a healing effect when we work back from the limbs, from human movement, to the processes of the internal organs.

At the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, for example, it is possible to seek out this eurythmy therapy and see how it can be a special branch within the whole healing process, which can be found on anthroposophical ground, based on real human knowledge.

It would, of course, be going too far to go into details in this area in particular. The principle is actually given in what I have presented.

So it has just happened that we have had to develop this therapeutic current within the anthroposophical movement in the most diverse ways because, so to speak, medical experts have approached us. It has arisen out of the conditions of our time. It has been demanded, so to speak, by present-day civilization. Anthroposophy has basically only given the answers to questions that were put to it.

Today I have only been able to give you an aphoristic account of the principles; more is not possible in this already all too long time. And if I wanted to explain just a few things so that it would be, I would like to say, in its entirety, then I would have to do something similar to what I rejected the day before yesterday in the eurythmic lecture; I would have to invite you to stay overnight and listen to me until tomorrow morning, when we would then come together for tomorrow's morning lecture. This is something that can make people ill, and surely no one who wants to talk about healing can make people ill in this way! So it is better to send them home to a good night's sleep with a shorter presentation.

Of course, my first words must be, dear assembled guests, that I apologize for not being able to speak to you in your language, but that I will speak to you in German, which will have to be translated, and therefore the listening will have to be somewhat laborious for the esteemed audience. But since I do not speak English well enough to give a lecture, it will have to be like this. I am very grateful to some friends, especially Mrs. Larkins, that I am now able to speak to you on these evenings about something that has emerged in our spiritual scientific movement has emerged as a kind of medical movement, not, I would ask you to bear this in mind, in any sense of opposition to official science or official medicine, but with the intention of furthering the great insights and great advances in present-day science by means of spiritual-scientific contemplation. Even within the spiritual science movement, which, before such scientific currents came into their own, was more concerned with general human, artistic, religious, moral, educational questions and the like, it was not the case that the intention to become active in the medical field in an agitative way, but that doctors were also to be found in this spiritual-scientific movement on the continent who, despite their thoroughly scientific convictions, initially believed that they could satisfy their soul needs within this spiritual-scientific movement. And what they encountered there as a kind of exploration of the spiritual world beyond the physical-sensory world simply led them, little by little, to believe that many of the great doubts, many of the great questions that arise for the practical doctor within contemporary medical science can find satisfactory, I will not say immediate solutions, but satisfactory continuations precisely in this field.

And so a medical movement on the continent has grown out of our so-called anthroposophical spiritual scientific movement. I must say that I do not really speak with particular fondness about this part of our spiritual scientific movement, because you will see from the course of the descriptions that it is more important to me to produce remedies that are actually effective than to talk about them a lot. But what I want to assert here is based, above all, on foundations that need to be pointed out, that need to be pointed out to the scientifically educated people of today.

I can well imagine – and I am familiar with all the sources from which such things arise – that you are indeed experiencing opposition after opposition to what I will have to say. I fully understand these contradictions. And actually it cannot be otherwise today, when it comes to the scientific convictions of a physician, that such contradictions arise. Therefore, our first concern was not to advocate anything theoretically, but to start with practical work. And so the wishes of physicians and other scientific physicists, chemists and biologists were taken into account by founding scientific institutes, scientific research institutes. The most important of these is the Chemical-Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Arlesheim. And in connection with this, there is a biological and a physical institute within our movement. The fact that we are really concerned with serious research may be gathered from the fact that, for example, very important work has already been done in our biological institute, although the existence of this institute is actually only a very short one.

We have, in my opinion, succeeded in the Biological Institute, which is under the direction of Dr. and Mrs. Kolisko, at least to a high degree of probability, in elucidating the functions of the spleen , and in fact in the direction that we must see in the spleen function a regulation of those irregularities that arise in the rhythmic digestive process, in that man cannot eat completely in rhythm. And even if, for my part, he were to organize his meals in a very pedantic, exactly pedantic way, there would still be an interruption of the digestive rhythm due to the different choice of food and the like.

And then the remarkable thing turns out to be that the function of the spleen consists precisely in balancing the rhythmic disturbances of the human digestive process, which must be produced precisely by the life of the human being.

Recently, we have succeeded – as described in a paper that has just been published – in providing real proof at the Biological Institute that the smallest entities of different substances do in fact have effects.

This is not intended to advocate for any particular school of medical thought. Precisely when one proceeds exactly in this field, one finds that one area must be treated in the corresponding manner with correspondingly larger quantities, but the other area of the human organism must be treated with the smallest quantities. So far, there has basically only been the homeopathic belief in this field, no exact research.

It now seems that we have actually succeeded in proving in a very exact way that certain substances, for example antimony compounds, act on the growth of wheat grains in a different way when they are very highly diluted than when the dilution is further increased. If you continue to further dilute, you always end up with a rhythmic pattern of maxima and minima. We have done everything to prove, with full responsibility in this area, that dilutions even in the ratio of one to a trillion have vital effects. We germinated grains of wheat, which we had very carefully selected according to their germination intensities, in liquids in which we had the appropriately diluted substances, so that through the very conscientious way in which, I believe, Mrs. Kolisko works, what previously, I would like to say, could only have been presented as an amateur belief has actually been put on a scientific basis.

I mention this only in the introduction for the reason of showing that we do not want to proceed in an unscientific way, as happens in an amateurish way. The spiritual-scientific insights are indeed gained through spiritual vision, which I will not talk about in detail; this happens in the discussions that I give elsewhere. The great guidelines are indeed gained through spiritual insight, and through this spiritual insight I believe that I have succeeded in bringing about the possibility of being able to formulate the connection of the inner human organization with the constitution not only of natural substances not only of natural substances but, above all, of natural processes, so that the deep gulf that really exists today between pathology and therapy can be bridged by this method. So that in the future we will actually be able to have a pathology that merges into therapy by itself, because by looking at both the healthy organism and, in particular, the diseased organism, we will be able to discover exactly how – I will explain this today in a few examples explain in a few examples – not only of substances that have arisen outside the human organism, but also of processes that have taken place outside the human organism, whether in nature or in the laboratory, can be used to heal within the human organism. And it is the therapeutic aspect that is most important to us. We know very well that pathology is actually more advanced today than it itself knows. Today, pathology is something that can be taken up at any of its points and taken a step further. While there is indeed a deep gulf between the insight that exists with regard to the structure, the histology of organs, and how the actual remedy works in the human organism. Today we do not even fully understand the ordinary process of nutrition, which, I believe, is much more wisely designed by instinct than it could ever be designed by a scientific theory, let alone the exact relationships that exist between substances and between the functioning of these substances within the human organism, and outside both in nature and in those processes that can be carried out in the laboratory.

I have been led to believe that after more than thirty years of research, I have been able to determine that the most important thing in order to understand the human being in his or her entire constitution is to determine the fundamental difference between three different ways of functioning in the human organism. So I have learned to distinguish between three ways in which the human organism functions.

I have divided this threefold functioning – I would like to say that, of course, all things are in a state of becoming – first, in the broadest sense, into the nerve-sense process. I include everything that is connected with the functioning of the senses in the broadest sense and the nerves that are connected with them in some way in this first part. I now distinguish from this all those processes that are rhythmic in the human organism. And again, as a third step, I distinguish from these two processes those that are metabolic and motional processes. The metabolic and motional processes are, of course, intimately related; every internal and external movement of the human organism is in intimate contact with a metabolic process and can actually only be considered in connection with this as a function.

These three types of function in the human organism are fundamentally different from each other, so much so that what I understand to be the processes of the nervous-sensory life is even polar oppositely opposed to the processes that can be summarized as motor and metabolic processes. So that, for example, if we have any process in the metabolism, this process - and in fact every process in the metabolism - gives rise to a polar opposite process in the nerve-sense apparatus. The rhythmic processes are then the balance between the two. Now it is a matter of finding the real differences between these processes.

First of all, I would like to point out that a more precise insight into the human organism shows – I can of course only sketch these things in the short time available – that when we are dealing with the nerve-sense organization, we are essentially dealing with the effect of the substantial, the various substances in the human organism. So if we are considering something that is purely within the sense organization or the nerve organization, the essential thing for our consideration is that we know the relationship between some substance that we have in the world around us and that which, in turn, is found substantially in the course of the nerve-sense process.

If we are dealing with a metabolic process that is connected with a movement process, then what comes into consideration above all is not the substantial of what we find in the human environment, but the processes at work in the substantial. I would like to look at this from the other side. If it is a matter of being able to determine that there is a focus of disease in the nerve-sense apparatus, then I will have to investigate which substances can be considered as healing factors – we will discuss the details later. If, however, the aim is to heal a disease process in the musculoskeletal or digestive system, then it is important to investigate which process must be present, either as a natural process or as a laboratory process in the processing of substances, in order to transform the substances in question into remedies.

To give a specific example, which I will discuss in more detail later, let us assume that we are trying to determine the healing power of antimony. We will have to distinguish the healing power of antimony in relation to everything that has its source in the human nervous-sense apparatus. In this case, we would be dealing with the substance of antimony. If we are concerned with observing the healing effect of antimony on the motor system and the associated metabolic system, then we are concerned with subjecting antimony to such processes, combustion processes, oxidation processes, where the antimony rises as smoke and the smoke settles as a mirror*, and we will have to expect the success of this remedy from the correct execution of these processes. So that we can actually always say, quite fundamentally: we should seek the substances, the healing factors in the environment of the human being for the nerve-sense system. We should look at the processes that we either bring about ourselves or that nature brings about, as the healing ones for the metabolic and movement processes in the human organism. Since these two processes are polar opposites, the rhythmic, everything rhythmic, above all the respiratory rhythm, the circulation rhythm, the digestive rhythms, the other rhythms in the human being, the rhythm of sleeping and waking in the human being, these now have a mediating, balancing effect, so that in those processes that relate to the organs of the rhythmic organization of the human being, it is now also seen again in the production of remedies, in the interaction that will result from the preparation of the effective substance and the effective processes that one lets nature bring about or brings about oneself.

This only discusses a few fundamentals. I would then like to discuss the spoken word. After discussing the fundamentals today, I will take the liberty tomorrow of discussing some of our remedies that are produced in the pharmaceutical laboratory in Arlesheim and that are tried out in the associated clinic, which is under the excellent direction of Dr. Wegman, who is also present. From the very beginning, I was in favour of spiritual science only providing the guidelines, but not producing remedies, otherwise we would have our laboratories in connection with the clinic, so that it could actually be verified at the bedside in the clinic.

If we consider the differentiation of the human being in the processes of the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic-movement system, we must then find out how the human being is constituted in such a way that these three systems, although quite distinct from each other in terms of their functioning, permeate every part of the human organization. This is a less convenient way of looking at the human being than the usual one. In the usual approach, one takes any organ or part of an organ, looks at it histologically or in terms of cell anatomy, and so on.

Here it is necessary to distinguish, for each organ, the extent to which the nerve-sense process, the rhythmic process, and the metabolic-movement process are involved in the functioning of that organ. For all three forms are now involved in every human organ. Only when we go more to the actual sensory tools of the human being, then the nerve-sense process predominates, and the rhythmic process and the metabolic-movement process recede into the background. But if we are dealing with the metabolic-movement process, then only this metabolic process actually predominates in it. But there is nothing in the metabolic and locomotor system that is not permeated by the processes of the nervous sense system, which are subordinate here. And it is the same in the rhythmic system.

Now one can see through the whole human organization if one can have before one, for a really inner observation, the corresponding functioning in the organ. Let us say, for example, that we are dealing with some part of the brain. It must now be possible to see whether the two opposing activities of the organ are present in the right proportions: nerve-sense activity, metabolic-movement activity, and whether the rhythmic system functions in a corresponding way between the two, balancing them out. Roughly speaking, this is quite different in the case of the head organs than, for example, in the case of the digestive organs. But on the other hand, it can be seen how, precisely through this, a more exact knowledge of the human being is attained, both in a substantial and in a functional sense, in relation to his environment, and thus a connection between pathology and therapy.

Let us consider this with a single example. A disease that is perhaps less appreciated among serious illnesses, but which can be quite troublesome for some people, and for many people it really is troublesome – I would like to highlight it as an example – is catarrhus aestivus, which affects a great many people during a particular season. And to understand the underlying process, the following is actually necessary.

First of all, it must be clear that in childhood, and especially in early childhood, the whole structure of the three systems just mentioned is different than in later life. In childhood, we are dealing with a human organization in which the nerve sense organs engage with the other two systems in a much more intense way than in later life. In a sense, the child is entirely sensory organ. All processes take place in such a way that events occur throughout the whole organism, albeit in an intimate, delicate way, as they would otherwise take place at the periphery of the human being in the sensory organs. The child is actually a sensory organ in a more intimate, delicate way. In this way the whole organism of the child is more exposed to the outer world than is the case with the human organism in later life, in a similar way to the way in which the sense organs are exposed. For it is the case that everything that is connected with the nerve-sense organization is directly exposed to the outer world and is directly subject to the influence of the outer world. The entire organization of the child is therefore subject to the influence of the external world – in the broadest sense, of course, much more than at a later age, when one is entirely dependent on the internal processes of the organs, including the metabolic processes in connection with the movement process. Movements take place in the external world, but the underlying organization of these movements tends inwards, just as the nerve-sense organization tends outwards. We therefore find that under the influence of the predominant nervous-sensory organization, the child may experience processes that can be summarized under the name of exudative diathesis, loosening of the tissues, which in children can actually occur quite generally in the organism.

Later, when the metabolic-motoric process counteracts this preponderance of the nerve-sense process in the whole organism in the correct proportion for the later age of life, then, if the child has been carefully raised, the tendency to such exudative diathesis generally recedes and can later become specialized, so that the troublesome catarrhus aestivus can occur.

This catarrhus aestivus has been traced back – I need only mention this here – to certain substances that are said to be contained in the pollen of grasses. This only corresponds to the tendency of our time to trace pathology back to the immediate material exterior. If we look at the human organism spiritually and at the same time at the processes that take place in the environment of the human being when the grasses are in bloom, then we can definitely say: the whole natural process in the season when the flowering of the grasses, does not just take place around the grasses, but also around the human being, who is exposed to the same atmospheric influences under which the grasses are flowering.

Now, in humans, I would say, because they have specialized in their organization, especially in their noses and eyes, which then leads to catarrhus aestivus, when that which, under the preponderance of the nervous-sensory process, has led to exudative diathesis in childhood, specialized in the beginning of the respiratory organs inwards, then this annoying catarrh can occur. It arises from the fact that the human being is now also exposed to the same natural processes to which the gramineae must be exposed when they bloom and is particularly sensitive to these natural processes.

Because the sensory process is not sufficiently paralyzed by the metabolic process, because the sensory process remains predominant in the periphery, we have exposed man to the same atmospheric influences, the influences of his surroundings, that are favorable when grasses are flowering.

If you look at this process from the outside, if you really engage with the way in which it occurs as a natural process when grasses and gramineae flower, then you ask yourself how you can account for the sensitivity that occurs in catarrhus aestivus. And now, with this insight that one has gained, one tries to paralyze this process, which one has with the gramineae in such a way that it also takes place completely outwards, completely peripherally, I might say, into the air – because it is then also present in the human being, when the human being has precisely the has catarrhus aestivus – by looking for the fructification process, the rush towards the fructification process, which in the grasses, I would say, in complete nakedness, looks out towards the atmosphere, where it occurs, not peripherally directed outwards, but pushed centrally inwards. This is how it is found when you take fruits that are surrounded by leathery shells and in which the fructification process now takes place centrally inwards, centripetally, in some kind of tissue.

And if the opposite process to fructification is formed in the laboratory in the case of the gramineae, it is formed into a remedy, and if one tries to make this remedy effective by applying it by means of vaccination, vaccination, that is to say, by introducing it directly into the organism by vaccination, then one can indeed counteract this hypersensitivity to the same atmospheric influences that are favorable for the gramineae but that cause a disease process in humans. We have actually seen with this remedy, which we make as “Gencydo” and which has proven to be extraordinarily effective in the vast majority of cases of catarrhus aestivus, how it is possible to arrive at remedies through the appropriate formation of processes, which nature actually demonstrates to us. We just need to know in which case we need to work against the natural process. This is the case, for example, when the sensory nervous system is predominant, and we will see later when we need to work with the natural process. You just need to know how to proceed in each case. So that we not only use what has to happen in the laboratory, either chemically in the sense of the natural processes or against them, which we have as healing factors and not just as substances, but above all pay attention to the method of preparation, by looking at what in turn brings about the process as such in the outer nature, what constitutes the dynamic aspect of the process. We try to imitate this dynamic in a technical way, in order to extract the healing factors from nature.

In accordance with such principles, a large number of remedies have now been produced at the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim. They are all produced according to this principle, but all of them are thoroughly specialized.

I would like to mention the following remedy as an example. I must say that I understand every form of opposition and protest, since I know that the matters arise from a way of thinking that is not at all common or familiar. I would just like to state for us that the guidelines are given in this way and then thoroughly verified in our clinics, and that this is done in the same way and with the same sense of responsibility as is usual in clinical practice. Therefore, I may perhaps also, I would like to say, give somewhat more daring descriptions, in that I absolutely assume that, as I said, I understand all the opposition and it is perfectly understandable to me that even a kind of unease could assert itself in the face of these things, which could even seem fantastic.

It is extremely interesting to observe the remarkable process that takes place in the plant itself. In addition to the substances that make up the plant, we also find all kinds of other substances in the plant: salts, metallic substances, and so on. Now, for a therapy that is to work directly and rationally, it is less important to look at the composition of the plant than to look at the way, for example, let us say, some metal compound or salt goes through the whole process of growing and fructifying the plant.

Take any plant, for example Cichorium intybus. Anyone who really wants to study Cichorium intybus in a spiritual scientific way will first of all study the peculiar way in which the substances that are particularly important in Cichorium intybus are contained: silicic acid and alkaline salts.

However, silicic acid and alkaline salts are contained in Cichorium intybus in very different forms, under very different processing conditions in the root, leaves and flowers.

Anyone who studies this process in Cichorium intybus and sees how the processes that are attached to silicic acid on the one hand and to alkaline salts on the other are interwoven and intertwined in a unique way, will then be led back to the human being in a spiritual scientific way.

Now, as I said, in our body, in every organ system, three systems live, but one always predominates. Each, in turn, is active for the whole person; for example, if we consider the function of the gallbladder in the human organism in connection with all the other digestive organs, we find above all that, in addition to all the other functions of the bile, it is extraordinarily important for the health of the nerve-sense system that the bile functions, and functions properly. For if we attribute digestive disorders to disorders of the bile function, we can always see that there are also extremely great disorders in the organs of the nerve-sense system.

If we follow the process of bile secretion, it only becomes really interesting when we can see it in the context of the human constitution as a process that starts in the digestive system and supplies the nervous and sensory systems.

On the one hand, this process is present in the bile functions of the human being, quite apart from the substances that play a role in it. On the other hand, it works in almost exact imitation of the root of Cichorium intybus, in the bile secretion of humans, up towards the stalk and the flower. If we see how the silicic acid and alkaline salts are processed, we find in it an exact imitation of what the bile secretion process is in the human organism in its effect on the nerve-sense system.

Let us now imitate the process that takes place in Cichorium intybus. There are lay doctors who use Cichorium intybus directly when there are digestive disorders. But although they may achieve undeniable success, their results are seldom permanent, because the process that takes place in Cichorium intybus is linked to the lability of the plant itself and, when introduced into the human organism, undergoes such a change that it is no longer the same. But it is so related to the human process that when we process it in the laboratory, namely silicic acid, we make a preparation that contains silicic acid and alkaline salts in such a way that , not actually chemically, but only by pulverization, a loose connection is formed between silica and alkaline salts, more of a fine, natural, I would say, adhesion is present. And when we then introduce this through the alimentary canal, we are not actually introducing the same substances into the human organism, but we are introducing the same process that takes place during the secretion of bile, insofar as the secretion of bile is related to the functioning of the nerve-sense system. So what we are trying to do in the laboratory is to imitate, I would say to reproduce, what the plant itself does. For example, if we can recognize in the plant's formative process can be seen to be in some way polar or synchronous with some process in the human organism, so that in this way there arises a real interworking of pathology and therapy. One can see in the organ what is irregular in the interaction of the three processes.

And by listening to nature, as it were, to take over from the organism for a time what it cannot perform, by trying to explore this, one virtually introduces – I would say cichorium intybus proves to be the growing gall – the gall function in humans for a time because the organism itself cannot carry it out, until the organism has become accustomed to the foreign bile, to what has been produced according to the pattern of Cichorium intybus, to exercising the gall function. Then, so to speak, it works properly again.

The only problem is that the mere plant healing method cannot achieve the right result because nature works much more perfectly, because the plant process is in turn destroyed when it is introduced into the organism in any way.

Since time is getting on a bit and I do not want to take up too much of your time for this one occasion, I will just mention a few words about a remedy that has proved particularly successful and that our doctors have called “Biodoron”.

This Biodoron has come about through the fact that a comprehensive, spiritual-scientific view of the whole complex of symptoms of so-called migraine has been put forward. This migraine is also an extremely troublesome disease for many people, occurring in the most diverse forms. Migraine is now based on an irregular preponderance of the metabolic process where it does not belong, within that region of the human organization where the nerve-sense process, in conjunction with the rhythmic process, should actually have a preponderantly preferential effect.

Now my aim was once more to find this whole process in its entirety, as it expresses itself in the synopsis of the symptom complex of migraine, as a process out there in nature.

He now expresses himself in a wonderful way, in such a way that you have the symptom complex on the one hand and an opposing process in the way in which silicic acid is activated by the sulfuric acid salts in the process of Equisetum arvense. Equisetum arvense contains about ninety percent silicic acid. Tomorrow we will discuss the very important function of silicic acid for the nerve-sense system and everything related to it. However, the silicic acid in Equisetum arvense is processed in a certain way for the process, so that only in such a compound, as it is produced there with a resinous binder, can the formation process occur within plant growth through the interaction of the silicic acid with the sulfuric acid salts.

If you simply have the picture of Equisetum arvense in front of you and now see how this plant forms itself in a stiff way, with the silicic acid formation process prevailing everywhere, holding back all its growth from the flower being, which in turn can be found in connection with the normal metabolic processes, then you immediately get a real intimate view of the two processes, real intimate view of the two processes, the process that expresses itself in the symptom complex of migraine, and the whole process that takes place in such a wonderful way between silicic acid and sulfuric acid salts in Equisetum arvense, the idea arises: there are two opposing processes.

But that is not why equisetum arvense, used directly in any way, does not help against migraine. Because now the peculiarity arises, which becomes quite clear, that although certain vegetative processes in the human organism are similar to plant processes, they are radically different from the inside. It is therefore not a matter of merely taking up the process that takes place in Equisetum arvense and introducing it into the human organism, but rather of first, I might say, animalizing it.

Such things can be done if one imitates the process in the laboratory in the appropriate way, but inwardly in a living way, so that one uses silica on one side and sulfur on the other. One can use sulfur directly, because it is the actual active ingredient in Equisetum arvense. But now, by introducing the iron process, the binding is achieved alongside other binding agents, which are of secondary importance. Now the whole process of equisetum arvense has been animalized, and you get a preparation for which it is essential how you make it. Because the way the process is carried out, the way the preparation is finally obtained, shows that it represents the result of a process that takes place between silica, iron and sulfur. And what we have obtained as a preparation, which is now, I might say, first brought to rest in the preparation, is in turn called upon to enter into the process, set in motion, when it is introduced into the human digestive process and used — as I said, our physicians have called it “Biodoron” — precisely for combating troublesome migraines.

This migraine remedy has actually proved to be extraordinarily successful in almost all cases.

So we are trying to achieve the healing factors in a more dynamic way by establishing the appropriate processes for the remedies that you get from the Clinical Pharmaceutical Institute in Arlesheim. It is about what processes they contain, what processes they trigger in the human organism.

In this way, we have at least succeeded – the things have been verified in numerous cases – in finding about a hundred remedies for the various forms, for the various branches of tuberculosis, for the most diverse diseases of the digestive system, and so , as I said, about a hundred remedies; and we are in the process of putting the finishing touches on the process that we want to use to heal carcinomas internally with a certain plant-based natural product. However, I will speak about these remedies in detail tomorrow: tuberculosis remedies, carcinoma remedies, remedies for typhoid fever and so on.

It will have become clear that the essential thing for us is not what is in the preparation, but how the preparation was created in the laboratory. As a result, the preparation contains a certain process, which in turn is triggered within the organism in the same or a different form and lies within the course of an organic process or forms its polar opposite.

And in this way, by observing natural processes and the processes that can be recognized in pathology, it is possible to bring about the mutual relation between natural processes and processes in the human organism, the interaction that must exist if the natural processes in question are to be introduced into the human organism as healing processes. What is important is to induce healing processes by means of the functions we perform in our laboratories. Therefore, it is also of particular importance how these remedies are used, again in accordance with the differentiation of the human organism. The effect is fundamentally different depending on whether a remedy is introduced through the digestive process, or directly into the circulatory process by vaccination, or whether, as I will show tomorrow, it is applied more closely related to the sense process, to the nerve-sense process, as in the form of baths or washes and the like with our remedies.

So whether the remedy is applied externally or semi-internally, as in vaccination, or internally, it depends on how it affects the human organism. For I would like to say that the particularly significant thing about these remedies is that we do not want to heal through substances, but we want to heal through processes. And we administer remedies in the hope – that is to say, the things have been verified – that the processes that we can carry out from the overall view of nature and the human being are, as it were, preserved in the preparation and can be triggered again in the human organism as healing processes. This is the essentially new thing about the things we are dealing with. We want to heal through processes, through the how of production.

Therefore, for us it is not of such great importance to say what exactly is in the preparation, but rather it depends on how things unfold in the intimate sphere.

I will take the liberty of going into the therapeutic aspect tomorrow, and in particular into individual remedies and external applications.

Question: How long ago were the remedies for migraine and hay fever tried out?

Dr. Steiner: Well, it has been a number of years since the cases were tried out, especially in a large number of cases. The fact that our methods are verification methods means that they have this peculiarity: on the one hand, just as with a mathematical problem, success is, so to speak, foreseen and then verified. In this way, we are not dealing with a mere empirical method, but rather, as in the case of an experimental laboratory test, the fact that what can be assumed is verified naturally gives the verification a higher value than in the case of mere empirical testing. The methods are, of course, still young, and the thing at issue is that we would naturally be glad if they were tried out on the widest possible scale.

For Biodoron, verifications have been available for about three to four years, in a large number of cases, precisely verifications that are extremely important, for example in cases where the migraine was an old chronic condition that had been there for decades, and this remedy worked.

Of course, I would like to mention explicitly that it is extremely important to make the correct diagnosis, especially with this remedy. Therefore, the remedy can only serve as a verification if the diagnosis has been made correctly. Of course, it is not desirable to use this biodoron for every headache, because then negative cases can occur very frequently.

So the diagnosis must be correct; but then we place a great deal of emphasis on it. The percentage is extraordinarily high in the three to four years, because we do it clinically. In individual cases, however, it has also been tried out earlier by private doctors.

I would also like to mention that there are reports, both initial disputes about the methods and reports about the treatment and its success, specifically for Biodoron. They are published by the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart: “Migraine”, compiled by Dr. Knauer, a report that contains a number of cases - of course, not all of them can be listed - but a number of characteristic cases, and also a corresponding case study. I believe that these reports and descriptions can be obtained from the Clinical Therapeuticic Institute. Unfortunately, they are only available in German at the moment, but they can be translated into other languages at any time if requested.

I have been told that a more extensive theoretical foundation is desired for what I presented yesterday. Now it is always the case for me that the doubts and inner opposition that must quite understandably be asserted against the way of looking at things today are driven out even more strongly, I would say, from the inner being when this spiritual foundation is given, and that I with regard to medicine, I have a little hope that it is indeed the case in this field that if the remedies help when used and it can be seen from the remedies that there is something behind the matter, we will be forgiven for the theoretical basis. So in this area in particular, if it is not expressly requested, I am somewhat reluctant to provide the theoretical basis. For the time being it must sound even more fantastic, although it is as exact as mathematics, as that which can be said about the practice of remedies. Nevertheless, since it is desired, I will not only give a brief explanation at the end, as I had intended, but I will say something about this theoretical justification right at the starting point today.

The point is that, through the admirable progress of our natural science, infinite things have been achieved in relation to the knowledge of the external physical-sensual world, but that precisely this extraordinarily significant knowledge of the external physical-sensual world has led away from grasping the human being in his total entity.

What can be grasped with the laws of nature that are being explored out there in nature today, whether through observation or experiment, does not go further in the case of man than to comprehend the sensory organization, namely that which is incorporated into man like physical apparatus as senses, and that which is the mechanics of movement. The further one really penetrates into the nature of man, the more everything else recedes, so that the external laws of nature apply less and less. Of course, I still have to be brief, so I can only hint at things in aphorisms.

But it is well enough known that a human being actually consists, let us say, of at most ten percent or a little more of the physical and mineral substances that we know in a solid state, and that a human being is, by far, the largest part, let us say, of liquid.

In this liquid column, the impulses are again effective, which, mediated, for example, by the breathing process but also by other processes of the human organization, are processes that we actually only find in nature in freely moving air. And then, as a fourth factor, there are the heating processes. The laws of nature, with which we believe we can recognize the whole human being, can only be applied to that which is present in man in the same way as we find the sharply contoured, mineral-physical substances out in nature. Curiously enough, with these laws of nature we only recognize part of the sensory organization, or rather, because the sensory organization is mainly organized in the human head, part of the human head organization. The human head organization is namely the one that most closely resembles the physical world, the constitution of the physical world.

The human nervous system originates partly from the head. In any case, it is connected with the head organization in the human being, this nervous system. Now today we believe that the entire nervous system is connected with what we call the spiritual abilities in the human being. If you look at even a psychology that is only physiologically colored today, you will see that these psychologies actually only deal with the world of thoughts, the world of thoughts in connection with the brain and nervous system. The world of feelings and the world of will in man are, so to speak, only mentioned as something incidental, and it is believed that feeling and will are just as much connected with the nervous system as the world of ideas. This is not the case.

If I go back to the threefold human being, as I characterized it yesterday, I can say that only the actual faculty of imagination is connected with the human nervous system; the life of feeling is only indirectly connected with it. On the other hand, the life of feeling is directly connected with the rhythmic system.

And here we already have one of the points where, precisely because of its admirability in other fields, today's natural science has completely blocked the path from the physical organization of man to his spiritual organization.

The truth of the matter is that the entire emotional world directly engages the rhythmic organization, in the broader sense as I characterized it yesterday. And the nervous system serves only to mediate our feelings so that we can have ideas and thoughts about them. So the emotional impulses directly engage the breathing and blood circulation. The nerves are the organic mediators only for what we have as perceptions of our feelings. And just as the human being's emotional world intervenes in the rhythmic system, so the will intervenes directly and completely in the metabolic-motor system. And what we have in the nerves or through the nerves are only the perceptions of what we will, the perceptions of what we have willed. |

Now you will say: that need not interest the physician any further. It is a theory about the human being, and one could disregard it in medical terms. But that is not the case at all. It is not the case when one sees the consequences for today's medical view that arise from the prejudice that the nervous system is directly associated with the entire soul life.

Today, as is well known, a distinction is made between the so-called sensitive nerves, which are said to go from the center to the senses and convey sensory perceptions, and the so-called motor nerves, which are said to have something to do with the will.

In truth, there are anatomically and physiologically metamorphosed nerves, but there is only one kind of nerve. Each nerve is only a physical mediator of perception. And those nerves that we today call motor nerves are no different in function from the so-called sensitive nerves. While the sensitive nerve goes to the senses in order to perceive the outer world, the so-called motor nerve, which is also nothing other than an inner sensitive nerve, goes inward and conveys the perceptions that I have, for example, when I move a limb, that I have when I have to somehow carry out an unconscious inner movement. The nerve is only the mediator of perception for something external or internal. There are not two types of nerves, non-sensitive and motor nerves. For my part, the terminology is then unimportant to me, whether they are then called sensitive or motor, that is unimportant, but there is only one type and anatomically and physiologically something metamorphoses, there is only one type of nerve.

Of course I know that obvious objections can be raised against this view. But since I have been working on the development of this view of man for thirty-five years, I have really carefully examined all these objections. Every single fact that can be taken from the functioning or non-functioning of the nervous system, for example in the case of tabes dorsalis, every one of these facts, if it is really interpreted without prejudice, fits into the theoretical system that I have just explained to you. If you take today's interpretation of, say, tabes dorsalis, you will see contradictions everywhere. You can only come to terms with it if you know that there is only one kind of nerve and that the emotional world is not directly but only indirectly connected with the nervous system, that the emotional world directly influences the respiratory and circulatory systems and circulatory systems, and in the rhythmic system in general, that the will acts directly as a kind of metabolism, that unconscious will within us that underlies the overall metabolic process and which in turn metamorphoses into the conscious will that underlies the external conscious movements.

This was the first, I might say, the most overwhelming result that I have actually had for thirty years from the insights I have been able to gain about man. I did not dare to express it until 1917, because it is actually relatively easy to express any scientific result that differs little from the habits. On the other hand, it is really not easy, I might say, to go against the judgment, which seems so well-founded that there are two kinds of nerves, to proceed somehow in the world. And only when I could be certain that there is no scientific fact today that would contradict this, that could not be categorized within this view of the uniformity of the nerves, did I dare to express it in 1917, after three years of working on the development of this view.

But this view has a completely different consequence. Take just this fact: that the emotional impulses directly intervene in the rhythmic system, the will impulses directly intervene in the metabolic-movement system, then you have in the will system and in that which then further affiliated to the will system, in the human being's feeling system, we can only grasp this in a spiritual way, in that we can only grasp feelings as spiritual entities. And in these you have the impulses for, for example, circulation. And you get away from something that is really not easy to get away from.

Today, physiology, on which our entire medical way of thinking is based, seeks the actual motor for blood circulation in the heart, and the heart is seen as the organ that sends out the impulses to drive the blood through the organism. The opposite is true. The blood is moved through the organism by the spiritual being of the person, which directly engages the metabolism through the will organization, the circulation through the feeling impulses, and the breathing through the rhythmic system. This entire inner movement, this entire inner rhythmic activity comes directly from the spiritual being, and the heart, the activity of the heart is not the cause of the blood circulation, but it is the result of the blood circulation, the result of the movement of the fluids. The heart actually only expresses itself in its own movements, as it is inwardly stimulated and moved by the movement that actually comes from the spiritual being.

These are two things that must gradually be laid at the foundation of medicine as the basis of physiology: the view of the uniformity of the nerves and of the fact that the entire nervous life is only related to the life of the mind, and then, on the other hand, the movement of the liquid and air-shaped elements in the human being directly from the spiritual, so that the movement of the heart appears as a consequence of the rhythmic movement in the human being, not as its cause.

I still vividly remember the wild passions that I once aroused in a railway carriage on the line between Trälleborg and Stockholm when I expounded this heart theory to a Swedish doctor. The man was plunged into a terrible turmoil of passions. I can well understand how these things fit into what we are accustomed to thinking. But only in this way does one open the door from the physical human being to the spiritual human being. For in the moment when you have two kinds of nerves, one kind of nerve goes from sensory perception to the center, as a physical organization from the sense to the center. From the center the will nerve goes. The motor nerve also materially transmits that which now appears as will. You do not get out of the material at all. By constructing two kinds of nerves that do not exist — there is only one kind of nerve — you have closed the door to the spiritual in man. And that is what the admirable natural science, which is so great for the outer man, has brought for the human being. It has gone so far as to replace reality with a purely imagined theory, the purely imagined theory that there are two kinds of nerves, while the motor nerves are also sensitive nerves and are only there to perceive the inner movements. On the other hand, it makes the heart into a kind of pump, a physical apparatus that causes the rhythmic circulation of the human being through a kind of automatism. Then it deletes itself by transferring the entire cause of the rhythmic movements of the human being into this physical automaton, the heart, erasing the connection between the rhythmic system and also between the metabolic system and the spiritual essence of the human being.

This has been the shutting of the gate to the spiritual man, to the spiritual essence of man, that on the one hand the theory of the twofold nerves has been established, and on the other hand the heart theory, which does not allow the heart to be what it is, but makes it a physical motor for blood circulation, while in truth it is only the expression of the blood that is really moved by the spiritual human being.

This has significant consequences. Because only by seeing in this way, how the nervous organization is actually incorporated into the human being, can you relate the nervous organization in the right way, let us say, for example, in relation to the organization of the digestive system. The digestive system belongs to the system of the human being, which I have called the metabolic-movement system, and the nervous system is polar opposite to it.

Now let us look at the human being in relation to the one and the other system. In relation to the metabolic system: external substances are absorbed. The essential thing for the digestive system is the activity that is now triggered when external substances are introduced into the body. What the human organism is compelled to do because a foreign body enters it, which it has to transform, which it has to metamorphose, what the human being must therefore do: that is what is important, that is what this process comes down to in digestion, and this process stops at a certain stage. At the moment when this process, which initially progresses, comes to a standstill in the process of overcoming the forces of the external food, the impulse of excretion occurs. And the excretion occurs here in relation to the metabolic system in such a way that this excretion takes place directly outwards. We must therefore understand the metabolic-movement system in such a way that, firstly, the impulses of the human organism that are related to the will, the will directly intervenes in the metabolism, that these impulses, which are related to the will, the overcoming, the constitution of matter as it is outside, push it to such an extent that it reaches a certain point. Then it is excreted, excreted in all the ways that are known. But the excretion takes place outwards.

But that part of the digestive activity that is driven by the whole organic process into the head organization, that is, into the organization where the nerve-sense system is not exclusively, but preferably localized, not only goes only to this point in the human organism, to which the process goes in the metabolism-movement system, but what digestion is for the head organization is carried further, in that excretion no longer takes place externally, but internally. And what is the result of this internal elimination, which is deposited in the human being itself? That is the nervous system. The nervous system is the system in the human organism that actually owes its substantial content to an internal elimination, but which remains in the organism, is not expelled outward, and of course only remains in the organism up to a certain point, and there, through the plastic plastic forces of the first invisible entity of the human being, the first supersensible entity of the human being, the so-called etheric or life body, through the plastic forces, through the formative forces of this etheric or life body.

So that one has to distinguish, in addition to the physical body of the human being, this first supersensible entity, the etheric or life body, which is actually only dynamic, not material, only dynamic. These dynamic effects are present throughout the world in the same way, in the human being in a special way.

This formative body contains the formative forces that now shape those excretion products into the wonderfully constructed brain, indeed into the wonderfully constructed nervous system.

Dear attendees, I call upon you to examine without prejudice everything that can be said histologically, embryologically, or in terms of developmental history or evolution about the description, I mean, for example, of an embryonic cell and a nerve cell, to examine all this without prejudice and you will find that it cannot be in agreement with any other theoretical basis than the one I have just discussed.

And so one can really be, I would say, a very conscientious skeptic about what spiritual research, which I represent, says otherwise. It says that one can come to a kind of exact clairvoyance, an exact examination of this supersensible. I have described how to examine the supersensible exactly in my book, which has been translated into English as Initiation. It is precisely through such investigations of the supersensible that one comes to the conclusion that what no longer follows the physical laws of nature, but is actually a kind of artistic activity in nature, that one pursues these plastic, these plasticizing forces, which are primarily active in the human head organism, and which form those material entities in this head organism that would otherwise be driven outwards as excretory impulses.

So the strange thing that emerges from this approach is that we actually see a sum of degradation processes in our nervous system, and that the function of our nervous system actually consists of nothing more than degradation processes, because it is excretion that has been driven beyond a certain point and is plastically formed matter that has been formed after excretion.

This gives the fundamental difference between an organ that belongs to the nerve-sense organization and an organ that belongs to the digestive organization. An organ that belongs to the nerve-sense organization is much more advanced in evolution, is in a descending evolution. An organ that belongs to the metabolic-limb organization is only in an ascending evolution, goes to a certain point and from that point on promotes excretion.

These are the things that show us what the organs are like in their healthy state, but they are also the basic conditions for recognizing how the organs behave in their diseased state. And finally, these are the foundations that lead to the realization of the remedies in their connection with the disease process in reality. Let us make this clear with an example.

The process that takes place in our brain or, one could say, in the entire nervous system, this process, which develops matter up to a certain point, then breaks it down and in turn forms the breakdown products, so to speak the impoverished products, this process takes place in our nervous system. And this process of degradation, not assimilation, this process of dissimilation, not assimilation, this process of degradation, is the basis of our ideas. Our ideas are actually based on the fact that, with regard to our nervous system, we undergo a kind of atomic dying in every moment of our lives, which is only ever suspended by the building processes. One might say that in the moment of dying, everything that is distributed throughout a person's entire life on earth is compressed in the ongoing process of decomposition of the nervous system.

If one can study these processes, whereby one is dealing with a functioning of material forces up to a certain point, then with a breakdown, then one says the following: How do we actually think as human beings? How are we spiritual beings? Through the same forces through which we, say, enter into life through embryonic development? Not at all! Our physical system cannot develop in a straight line in order for us to be human, but from a certain point on it must undergo a living development, a devolution must occur. And it is in this devolution, not in evolution, that the basis is given for our spiritual activities.

Consider the consequences of such a view. It is believed that something like the nervous process is an ascending process, and as such, as an ascending process, like the growth process or like the nutrition process, it is the basis of thinking, of imagining. That is not possible at all. The basis of imagination is a process of decomposition. Matter must first be destroyed and the products of destruction must be formed plastically so that they can provide the basis for the functioning of the spiritual in us, for thoughts. We must first destroy our material basis; we must, so to speak, first make holes in the brain so that we can think. So it is not that the ability to think is based on the organic forces of growth, but rather that in order for the spirit to move into our organization, it is necessary that this organization first undergo a process of degradation, a process of destruction, a partial killing process.

Then, when you see this clearly, you come to the conclusion that here is a road, it has rained, it has a soft ground, cars drive over it; I see the ruts. But let us now assume that some being came down from Mars, had never seen a car, the cars were gone, and it only saw the ruts. He examines the furrows, goes into the earth and says: Below the surface of the earth, in the interior of the earth, there are forces that have made the furrows from below. — We cannot blame the being for seeking the reasons for the furrows in the earth's interior, only they do not lie therein, but in the wagons that have driven over them and made the furrows.

It is more or less the same with our brain. You believe that this is an organizational process of our organs outwards; while the furrows of our brain are diggings of mental and spiritual life. And we now come to the conclusion that we only use our physical body in relation to its nervous-sensory organization as the counterforce, as the resisting force, in order to carry out spiritual activity. Just as you can trace every track of the car up there that has driven here or there – and you can deduce a lot from it, there is always a trace of something the car has done – so you can, of course, explain all thinking from the brain. That is precisely the wonderful illusion of materialism: one should not say that one should not explain it from the brain; on the contrary, one can explain all thinking and the life of imagination from the brain, but because it is buried by the spiritual life.

If you follow this process, which is a process of decomposition, and then go from the human being out into the great cosmic process, you have the same processes out there. And you have the process that takes place in man today, but only remains - if I may express it this way - in the status nascendi, in the moment of its origin, this process, which takes place in the degradation of the material underlying the nervous system, this process, which is only arrested in the status nascendi, you have it cosmically present in nature in the formation of silicic acid, everywhere it occurs in nature. Therefore, if you prepare a remedy from silicic acid in the right way, which presents the same process out in the cosmos, only that there the process continues and then comes to a halt at a later point, while in the human head it is suspended in the nascency state, if you out there in the corresponding way for the preparation and administer it to the person in the appropriate way, then you take this process away from a body that has become weak in its etheric body in such a way that it cannot carry out this process, through the remedy. Now, the remarkable thing about silicic acid is that when we bring it through the substances we add to it and through the processes by which we process it, when we bring it to the head in the entire human organizational process, it can actually take from the human being that which he cannot do through his inner organizational powers because of an organic weakening.

So you are looking directly at what is going on in the human head. But you have to see the human head in connection with the spiritual impulses. And you look at what is going on outside in the cosmos in the formation of silicic acid, and you recognize that in the silicic acid process, fixed in silicon, in Silicea, you have something that you can organize into the human being, thereby relieving him of what he cannot do without it. But in so doing, you call upon the innermost organization of the person, so that it can do on its own what has been taken from it for a period of time.

Thus, spiritual insight reveals what function silicic acid actually performs in the human organism when the organism itself cannot perform this function. This is the fundamental insight that arises when one sees through the entire human organization and also its connection with external nature. One need only ask: What does not happen in any part of the human organism and what should happen?

If you then know from nature what the process is that is missing in that part of the human organism, pathology is immediately the real basis of therapy. And answering each question in the pathology correctly is immediately the therapeutic answer.

This is what the possibility of proceeding in such a way means that one says: Now, I am producing a remedy. By seeing the context, I can predict how the remedy will work. If it actually works that way, then it is a verification, not mere empiricism, but a verification.

Look everywhere to see how the external sciences do it. If one is able to predict what should happen through some theoretical view, then one does not look at the multitude of cases that verify, but if one sets up the conditions correctly and what was predicted comes true, then one initially considers what one assumed to be verified. And particularly in practical work it is important that such a verification occurs, because practice in this field always shows whether our predictions are right or not. So what can be achieved by directing human knowledge from mere physical nature to spiritual nature is that we learn to foresee the processes we observe in pathology in a therapeutic treatment in the same way that we would otherwise foresee an external natural process in the laboratory or in a physics cabinet. If it occurs as we have predicted, then we have understood the matter. Thus, we extend what is truly scientific in the way we are accustomed to doing in physics, while in the biological sciences, and especially in their practical therapeutic application, we can clearly see today that a mere empiricist method is at work. It is therefore not a matter of having less science, but of having more science in order to arrive at a truly rational, that is, also transparent, understanding of the connection between pathology and therapy.

It is already alarmingly late. Therefore, I will be obliged to summarize some things in a shorter, final part, which may shed some light on the therapeutic side of what I have said.

If we consider this organization of the sensory nervous system, which is mainly concentrated and localized in the human head, we find, in view of what has been said, that it essentially underlies the life of thought, the life of imagination. But what is it that man calls his life of thought? It is that which plays into consciousness from the actual power of thoughts, and that which the human being actually perceives in such a way that he speaks quite instinctively and involuntarily of how the thought is not actually a reality. The thought that is experienced is powerless. The thought that is experienced is basically only present in an imagistic existence.

On the other hand, this life of thought has another side, an essentially different side, and we can, I would say, easily bring before our soul what other side this life of thought has if we merely bear in mind that this phenomenon, after consciousness, is not yet present in the very young child. On the other hand, the other side of this life of thought is very much present in the very young child. This is the real dynamizing, plasticizing power of the life of thought. We have one side of the life of thought, which comes to manifestation in ordinary consciousness in the forms of images, thoughts and concepts, and we have, as it were, the power of thoughts directed backwards, which is identical with the plasticizing power I mentioned earlier. So that when we look at the life of human thinking in its connection with the whole human organism, we must actually say: what we perceive and directly experience of the life of thought is like a mirror image in relation to a real object. The real thing about the life of thought is the inward-going formative forces.

And we see these inwardly active formative forces at work most powerfully in the very young child, who does not yet have a conscious life of thought. It is precisely when a person is still a child that the greatest work is being done on the development of the organ that will then become the basis of the life of imagination itself.

We dare to speak of a latent warmth and of a warmth that appears, of an appearing warmth. We know that through certain processes a bound warmth can be released, coming out of the substance in which it was bound, was latent. We dare only not yet to speak in the same way of the fact that in the child the conscious life of imagination is gradually driven out of the unconscious life of imagination, and that this unconscious life of imagination in the child works most vividly on the plastic material that has been excreted in order to bring about the nervous system through its plasticizing power. This plasticizing power then lasts for the whole human life, being strongest in childhood. And thus we see the first supersensible in man.

Supersensible are the thoughts, but they are actually only the images that are experienced; but supersensible are also the forces that now form the actual organ of thought, the forces working on the nervous system.

But one would like to say that this is only the part of the supersensible human being that is closest to the physical event, to the physical process. It is something that looks at itself, I would say, like that which stands between the physical body and the soul. But if we look at the rhythmic system, which, as I said, is directly related to the emotional life of the human being, we see something higher at work in this rhythmic system, and we see in the rhythmic system not just an etheric plastic at work, so to speak, but an etheric plastic that is ensouled. And in its innermost part, rhythm is precisely this remarkable interweaving of the process that we have seen on the one hand in the digestive-motor system, in the metabolic-motor system, where the evolution of the material process is brought to a certain point, where the material process then wants to excrete, while in the nervous process it excretes inwardly.

If we now imagine the whole process in such a way that it is, as it were, guided as a metabolic process up to a certain point, then excretion arises, but is immediately repressed, so that the whole process constantly oscillates back and forth between a metabolic process and a degrading nervous process, then you have the basic type of that rhythmic process that underlies all rhythmic processes. It is connected with an activity of the human being, of the supersensible, of the spiritual human being, which emanates from the ensouled etheric process, from the ensouled ether life, so to speak.

And if we look at breathing, at blood circulation, at something that takes place in the sphere of rhythmic processes, we have this, as it were, in contrast to the mere etheric process, higher activity of an ensouled etheric process in our rhythmic processes. These can now in turn be assessed in connection with the processes in the cosmos.

We see how, where it should not go beyond its limits, the metabolism goes beyond its limits, so that it becomes a nervous process in the wrong place, so to speak, in the wrong organ of the human being. It certainly looks fantastic, but it corresponds to reality. If, within the metabolic system, the actual metabolic system, the metabolic process leads beyond the point that I have characterized, where it should lead to excretion, and, as it were, passes over into the nerve process in the wrong place, then the disease arises, which appears in the various forms of typhoid fever. So we have to say: typhoid diseases are nervous processes occurring within the metabolic process, nervous processes that naturally only occur as processes and cannot lead to the actual formation of a nervous system. The question now is: how do we approach such a process?

Here we again look out into the cosmos, and we find in the cosmos that remarkable substance which is naturally contained in the cosmos as a process but is retained in antimony ore. Actually, the minerals, the ores, are processes that have been firmly retained.

This antimony is a remarkable mineral, a remarkable ore. It always begins to crystallize, as it were, forming shapes that are spiky, wire-shaped figures. It almost looks like a plant or moss trapped in the mineralization. But it also has other properties. If we subject this antimony to a certain electrolytic process and apply what we obtain from it to the cathode, it only needs a very light touch with a metal tip to produce a small explosion.

And again, if we cause this antimony to burn under certain circumstances, and collect the smoke on certain surfaces, we obtain the wonderful antimony mirror, a deposit of the antimony ore that has passed through a certain type of combustion process, producing smoke, and has deposited the smoke. We get, through a process to which we can subject the antimony, a kind of continuation of the process that we see in the antimony as it occurs in nature.

When we now obtain this antimony level – and the extraction of the antimony level* is something very important within our pharmaceutical laboratory – when we obtain this antimony level, we approach those forces that have a regressive effect on such processes, which lead from within the metabolic system into the nerve formation processes. I would like to say that the antimonizing forces turn this process in the metabolism, which wants to overshoot its target, back to its target. And we get a reproduction of the rhythmic process by driving back the organic process that goes too far, through the antimony that has been brought to the antimony level.

In this way, if we use this antimonizing power correctly, we can directly destroy this, I would like to say nerve-forming process at the wrong place, stop it, return it to its correct place and, by grasping the actual typhoid process, by looking at nature, we can see which process leads back this pathological process, the corresponding therapeutic process.

So that we are always able, by simply observing the pathological processes in nature, to find either the supportive or, as I said yesterday, the counteracting processes and thus in fact to bring about the remedies in a very rational way.

We can truly hope that what has already brought us success to a very great extent, but which is only now actually in its completion, namely the search for a cure for carcinomas, can also be brought to an end.

If one has to say that the metabolic process can be driven beyond its goal, so that it leads to the nervous process, so to speak, carries out the nervous process, the nerve-forming process, in the wrong place, something else can occur. Not only can the tendency to form nerves arise in the human organism in the wrong place, but the tendency to cause processes that otherwise only occur in the sensory organs can arise in the wrong place. There the metabolism is driven even further than just to the point where it wants to occur as nerve formation; there the metabolic process is driven to the tendency to form a sensory organ in the wrong place in the human organism. And this tendency underlies carcinoma.

However skeptical one may still be about this today, the more and more one proceeds, especially if one proceeds, I would say, with this guideline histologically and so on in the examination of carcinoma, one will see that carcinoma is based on a sense organ that wants to develop in the wrong place. Of course, this is very approximate and rough, but the process that should actually only be active during the formation of the sensory organ underlies it.

And now the question is: how can we drive this process back to the point where the metabolism should actually end and immediately lead not to deposition but to immediate excretion?

And here the healing process presents itself to us by using the sap of various types of Viscum, and not, as some have objected, because it is based on an amateurish idea, but on the contrary, because it is based on a real understanding of the process that actually takes place when mistletoe forms as a parasitic plant here or there, say, on one tree or another. There is something extraordinarily complicated at work here.

If we examine the process that, roughly speaking, underlies the formation of wood, the emergence of the tree from the common herbaceous plant, from the plant that is not yet lignified internally, if we can see this process of becoming a tree from the plant in the right way, then this process is cosmically a very, very strange process. We are dealing with the earth's surface when we have an ordinary herbaceous plant that has not yet become woody, that is not becoming a tree. The root actually grows intimately together with the earth's surface; it belongs, so to speak, to the earth's surface, because there is also a continuous metabolism with the earth's surface. Then the herb grows with the leaves and the flower grows out of it. It then passes into the atmospheric influences and so on.

Now, today we are looking at - I have to draw on a kind of biological geology here - the inorganic part of the earth's soil as if it were something absolute. But everything that we have as mineralized in the earth's soil is originally a secretion. If we proceed as today's geology does, then we certainly do not come to any knowledge of the earth's formative process, because we abstract out of the earth's formative process the mere mineral basis. It is as if we were to present geology today as a finished system, as if we were to present the mere human skeleton and claim that it can have an existence in itself. The human skeleton can only have an existence as a separate, I would say mineralized, entity. A skeleton cannot arise by itself. Nor can a skeleton be considered in isolation, only in connection with the human being as a whole.

Thus, what geology gives can only be considered in connection with the living organic and spiritual earth. We do not have something original in the geological formations before us, but we have something before us that is isolated. In fact, the process of coal formation is only the simplest, most elementary process of mineralization. But everything, all the slate formations, all the crystalline formations, everything is secreted, is excreted, is, so to speak, that which is mineralized out of an originally undifferentiated organic spiritual substance.

These things are so difficult to defend today because, one might say, the counter-arguments are so obvious. They are almost self-evident, the counter-arguments, and they are so easy to see through, the counter-arguments. It is actually so terribly easy today to calculate – approximately, of course, no one claims that it is certain – how many millions or hundreds of millions of years one has to go back to this or that geological formation. This is a method that seems to be extraordinarily exact, but it is a method just as if I observe the small changes my heart undergoes within a month; now I try to calculate how much that is in three years. It is exactly the same thing. I can now calculate what my heart will be like in three hundred years, and I can calculate a state in which my heart was three hundred years ago, only that I myself was not yet there! The calculation is quite correct, the conclusion is correct, impeccable logic, only it is not realistic. Likewise, the calculations of geology are flawless, completely logical, only they are not realistic, because the earth was just as little there millions of years ago as when I calculate my own formation as a physical human being three hundred years ago. The calculation is correct in geology, but the earth was just not there before these three hundred million years.

And so a higher way of looking at things must be adopted. It sees something deposited in everything that is mineral. When the plants emerge from the ground, we have the mineral. When the tree arises instead of the usual herbaceous plant, the development of the tree trunk with its lignification is a throwback, an atavism to an earlier state in which the whole earth was. So just as we have other atavistic organs, we see in the development of the tree an atavism to an earlier state of the earth.

If now Viscum grows on the tree, then we have something growing inside the soil that is not the immediate soil, because that is a late product, it is a product of deposition, a product of separation. Instead, in the Viscum we have something that grows in an earlier state of the earth. But then again, if we pursue the matter further, we must also find that man has taken up the tendency to form a sense in his evolution last. We find that by observing the mistletoe formation process, we find a process from a very early period of the earth.

If we introduce this process into the human organism, namely by injecting it directly into the circulation process, then we transport the person to an earlier stage of their existence on earth, of their evolution, and in this way we work against these processes, which are the latest processes.

However, it must be quite clear that these are first of all the abstract thought-constructions or at the most also the abstract constructions of clairvoyant seeing. It is seeing, but it is not yet complete overview.

If we take directly what is active in mistletoe in the mistletoe process and introduce it to human beings, it changes too much, as I said yesterday for other things. And so we are now trying to process what is alive in the mistletoe formation process using a very complicated machine that develops a centrifugal and a radial force, develops a centrifugal force at a tremendous speed. The construction was not that easy. So that one can actually transform that which is effective in the mistletoe process into a completely different aggregate process and thereby use the tendencies in the mistletoe-forming force in a more concentrated way than it appears today, when the mistletoe process is a decadent process.

And so we will try to make more and more progress with this anti-carcinogenic agent in particular, which has already been developed to a certain degree of perfection and has also already produced certain results. However, it will only be fully developed and can only be given its final verification when this, I would like to say, laboratory process with the centrifuge – it is now ready – is fully developed to its end. And in this way, too, we will try to get at the carcinoma disease in an ever better way.

In a similar way, we are trying to get at the tuberculosis processes, the various organ processes, and so on, with our various means – the time has gone too far for me to explain this in more detail, but I will discuss the principles. We use the remedies in different ways, as I have already indicated, by introducing them directly into the metabolic system or by injecting them into the circulatory system, where they act differently again, or by adding them to baths and the like, where they act more on the sensory process from the outside.

We also use, for example, so-called eurythmy therapy, where we allow movements that lie within the human organism to be carried out. If you look at a human hand without prejudice, you will never say that this human hand can ever be at rest; the shape of the hand itself is only the movement that has been held. The hand is movement. In fact, every human limb is designed for movement. If I carry out the individual movements that correspond to its formal qualities, I may be able to use the movement to have a healing effect on the formal qualities. This is the kind of eurythmy therapy that is related to artistic eurythmy, an artistic presentation of which will take place tomorrow at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. But this eurythmy is thoroughly developed in the physiological sense in eurythmy therapy. Such eurythmy therapy in turn leads to what I would now like to call the external therapeutic measures practised in the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim.

And so it is precisely in this Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, which, as I mentioned yesterday, is under the excellent direction of Dr. Wegman, who is present here today, that we are trying to use everything that can be known about the spiritual human being, in addition to what science currently knows about the physical human being, for therapy in a rational sense.

And for this we had to incorporate the Clinical Pharmaceutical Laboratory into the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, so that it can produce remedies in the same way as they arise from a true knowledge of the human being.

Now, I have tried, as best I could, to give a few brief aphorisms to show how, in this way, I do not want to oppose modern medicine, as I said, but how this medicine, in an equally scientific sense as it works in its present field, can be further extended into those areas of the human organism where the spiritual intervenes in this human organism. And the irregularity that arises as a form of illness through the incorrect intervention of the spiritual, through the intervention of the unconscious spiritual that does not correspond to the organism, must also be included in the thinking that must be total medical thinking. Little by little, medical thinking must come to see in man not only a physical being, not only physical processes in his activities, but purely physical processes only in one part of the human being, and in the far greater part of the human organism, to see something in the human organism in which the spiritual directly intervenes, which the human being has in him from the spiritual world just as he takes his material from the physical material world in the form of food and other things. Only then, when the whole human being is looked at in this way in a physiological sense, will it also be possible to look at the whole human being in a pathological sense. But this holistic view of the human being in its pathological context, inseparably linked with pathology, provides a real therapy, because one gets to know the relationship between the human being and his cosmic environment, and one can then find the healing remedies from the cosmic environment not just through empirical trial and error, but through a proper insight and understanding of the connection between the human being and the cosmos. This will create a form of therapy that will not have an abyss between itself and the pathology, but will form a whole with the pathology.

And that was what many physicians longed for in the anthroposophical movement and which this detailed approach, I might say, within this spiritual-scientific movement, which has made its mark in the field of medicine, was intended to remedy.

I hope my aphoristic remarks have not become too unclear. But when one has to present something briefly, one still wants to present the overarching principles. Sometimes the individual suffers as a result. But hopefully I have at least been able to provide some individual inspiration in these remarks.